
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelt.3^2,/ 3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Chatelaine. 



"II lifefo del Perche 

stampato ancor non e." 







l^^^^S6i^^U6^^j%^^ 



Che Peter Paul Book Company 

Buffalo, new Vork 

mi 



TWO COPIES KECEIYED 




^13 



8605 



Copyright, J897 
by G. E, X. 



Printed and bound by The 
Peter Paul Book Company 
in Buffalo, New York. 



Bold on, hope bard in the subtle thing 
that's spirit; though cloistered fast, soar free* 



—ROBERT BROWNING. 




A DONNA,-la cara Donna 
mia,— commands me to fetch 
her a chatelaine:— u not one of 
those housewives' devices jin- 
gling with scissors, needles, keys, 
but one made up of countless 
chains, of countless lengths, some of them 
mere links of a chain,— and all to have 
depending from them anhangsels, ikons, 
crosses, crescents,— symbols all, charms 
all/' Such her command* Surely it 
were a simpler thing to build for la 
Donna mia, a shrine, — or, for her carve 
a prie-dieu;— but it is a chatelaine— she 
would have— a chatelaine, hung with 
signs and symbols, christian and heathen: 
these to be gathered from all lands; 
and among them she will find one — 
some— the which to hold between her 
hands' palms* Her hands' palms!— that 
sounds like prayer* Such her will:— I 
obey:— and pray la Donna mia to be 

my Eady of tbc Chatelaine, 

to whom, on bended knee, I offer this her 
command, 

the gbmeiaitte. 



14th February, 1897. 



HEN work is entered upon for 
a loved object, the mind pur- 
sues the tracks of light with 
no common pleasure, and 
makes over the result of its 
labor without reservations or gradations, 
since less than all could not satisfy a mind 
so inspired* 




r is among: the pleasant truths of 
Friendship that it is not required 
to give security,— corresponding to 
bonds in the commercial world,— 
but it is its privilege to offer evi- 
dences, the charm of which is their sim- 
plicity ♦ A leaf, a flower, and Friendship 
has the better thing than bonds* 



10 




WALLOW-WINGED is Love, 

sweeping the lake with wings of 
delicious joyousness and making 
between earth and sky fascinat- 
ing flights* ♦ ♦ ♦ Eagle-winged is 
Friendship, making by ever ascending 
circles its rock-high eyrie, from whence, 
with wings pinioned for any storm, it 
makes its flights, as secure in the blast as 
does the swallow-winged in the breeze* 



11 




HERE are no natures so 
beautiful as those which, 
like to sacred vestments, 
retain, however worn in 
service or desecrated by- 
mutilation, their rich design, mas- 
terful execution, soft colorings 

Note* — The embroider ed wonders may 
be seen for a shilling in the churches' ward- 
robe rooms* 



12 



ET the sense of feeling 
be but fine enough, 
and the wonder will 
cease that a princess 
there was who could 

not sleep because of a rumpled 

rose leaf in her pillow* 




13 



There are too many threads woven 
into soul-life for the shuttle to have been 
in any hand but His who weaves the 
eternal destinies* 



14 




HERE is in Nature an audible 
silence,— a silent noise,— that is 
the only acceptable accompani- 
ment to thoughts that are as 
sensitive to the jar of social 
silence as to its noise* 

"Then,- round me the sheep 
Fed in silence -above, the one eagle wheeled slow- 
as in sleep." 

"It was a holy hush, a warning that 
heaven was stooping low to whisper some 
good thing to the listening earth,"— and 

44 Once more the string 
Of my harp made response to my spirit/' 



15 



EE to it that Opportunity weaves 
a woof fine, and that Purpose 
embroiders it fittingly,— and thus 
wilt thou possess a veil as suited 
to thy soul's holy of holies as that 

which shut the inner from the outer court 

in Jerusalem's great temple* 




16 



Beware of building an altar, "To the 
despaired of*" Hope will waste none of 
her fire upon such* 



Any board is a festal board if at it we 
drink* with another* the wine of life* 



17 



is well that the lines of some 
lives ate cast in the open, indif- 
ferent as they are to the conven- 
tional, caring only for the full, 
strong air of life* To such, soci- 
ety living* would be a tormenting yoke, 
and like the untamed, caged, creat- 
ures of the mountains, they would ever 
be pining for the succulent bit of stalk 
among the rocks* So perfectly is the 
natural born in bone and blood of them, 
that it seems the dead and gone is incar- 
nate, toned only a trifle by latter-day 
conditions* How they love it all:— the 
hills and forests!— and the crunch of the 
leaves, now), under their feet ! Savage ? 
Yes, in their untamed love of the 
mountain's majesty, of the plain's beauty, 
of the sea's grandeur, of the desert's si- 
lence! Nature's love unchangeable* 



18 



HE secrets of the violet and 
the rose do readily reveal 
themselves in mud flats 
where the warmth of dear 
old mother earth is extinct, 
and the wonder is that they blos- 
som at alL 




19 



HERE are words of which every 
letter holds a mystery; and 
though there is a key, we do not 
always care to use it, since for 
the sake of the sense of joy there 
is in the unexplored, we would not repeat, 
in its entirety, any one sentence* 




20 



THE PURPLE GALLERY* 




HEN the dust and heat of 
the way begin to dull the 
br am, and an almost fatal 
inertia overtakes it, wander 
into The Purple Gallery, 
breathe its atmosphere, and 
turn the leaves of book and book; not for 
study but for the sake of being borne 
along on winged words through the days 
and to be floated on the dreams and fan- 
cies of them into the oblivion of night* A 
close, snug place this Purple Gallery, 
with corners into which any dreams will 
fit, any moods find sympathetic touch* 
Here the spirit rules: and here the brain 
wakes to the heroic or sleeps in dreams, 
whichever chances to be the u sweet will" 
of it* 

A book lies open:— the eye follows a 
line and the ear hears the soft notes of 
some sweet singer,— a wail,— a chant,— 
a song coming out of the distance ; thrill- 
ing with its sadness, comforting with its 
sweetness* 

A book lies open:— its pages half hid- 
den in obscurity, that obscurity which 



21 



"proceeds from the profoundness of the 
sentences; containing contemplation on 
those human passions which are either 
dissembled, or not commonly discoursed 
of ; and do yet carry the greatest influ- 
ence among men* An obscurity come of 
that strong individuality which subtil- 
izes, rationalizes, concentrates, — which 
crowds the use of words, and thinks more 
than words can express* Sentences, full 
stored with meaning, and words sen- 
tences*" 

The eye follows the page, and the 
brain wakes to the heroic* A new world 
is discovered, and Thought the courier of 
it* No longer is the will subject, but 
master,— sovereign supreme! A Viking 
is watching from his ship's prow the sun 
chase the mists from the mountain's 
side, disclosing to him the place of the 
buried gold* The ship's prow strikes the 
shore,— the Viking walks along the shelv- 
ing bank,— at a turn, the bank breaks 
away and a rock, cold and hard, juts out, 
— the way ends* A rock, cold and hard, 
but wearing a crown of superb life;— a 
tall, straight pine, that tosses its head in 
feathery fullness against the sky, and with 
its roots overspreads the rock's hardness* 
The Viking questions, What kind of 
an affinity is this? Why a form so 
splendid in itself, should thus cling to a 



22 



rock:— a thing through which the warm 
throb of life never passed ? Law ?— what 
law? The book lies open* Here is a 
life that had failed in the attainment of 
its possibilities unsupported* The soft* 
yielding earth had failed to raise it sky- 
ward* or to bring from it those gentle 
qualities that made the rock beautiful as 
a thing of life : and though the rock felt 
not the warmth of those clinging roots* nor 
the pine a response to the pulse of its life 
currents* a law* beneficent in its exac- 
tions* was fulfilled* The gold is within 
the Viking's grasp ! 

A book lies open:— and from the page 
a cry of pain comes through the Gallery's 
silence* "Oh, why should the great 
Creator shatter one of His most admi- 
rable works? If the order of the sun 
and the stars is adorable* if the law by 
which earth and sea are governed man- 
ifests the Hand of Supreme Wisdom and 
Power* how much greater than these 
the perfection of beauty* as manifested in 
man* And here* a soul*— rich in gifts* 
rich in attainment* placed in a form sur- 
passingly lovely* and this form so surpass- 
ingly beautiful in its union with* and 
subordination to the soul* as to be almost 
the soul's true expression: yet this choic- 
est* rarest being* this rarest specimen of the 



23 



Almighty's skill He has pitilessly shat- 
tered, in order, that it may inherit a 
higher and eternal perfection! O mys- 
tery of mysteries, that heaven may not 
be obtained without such sacrifice ! And 
the awful mystery remains to that day 
when all things shall be made light*" 
Love, here had laid a parting benediction 
upon "the head of the beloved and gone 
on his way in rapturous sorrow," crying, 
singing, oh, 

44 Heart of my heart, when that great light shall fall 
Burning away this veil of earthly dust, 
And I behold thee beautiful and strong, 
My own true, perfect angel, wise andjust— 
If the strong passion of this mortal life 
Should in the vital essence still remain, 
Would there be then, as now, some cruel bar 
On which my tired hands shall beat in vain ? 
Or shall I, drawn and lifted, folded close 
In eager asking arms, unlearn my fears, 
And in one transport, ardent, wild and sweet, 
Receive the blessings of the endless years ? n 

Crying, singing, till the great light shall 
fall! 

A hook lies open: — and through its 
pages run, what 

44 Was the site once of a city great and gay/' 

The spirit is fascinated with the story 
of its vanished greatness ; by its vanished 
gayety appalled* There, on the level 
length of hill run the broken ramparts :— 



24 



so broken that the lizard scarce finds 
shelter from the blaze of the sun that 
scorches and sears the forsaken land, but, 

u Such plenty and perfection see, of grass 

Never was ! 
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, overspreads 

And embeds 
Every vestige of the city, ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 
Oh heart ! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! 

Earth's returns 
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! 

Shut them in, 
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest ! 

Love is best." 

A book lies open: — a,nd all the Gallery- 
is suffused with a light, warm and glow- 
ing* The eye glances down the page, 
and the brain feels unmeasured charm in 
that art which has here hung a morning- 
like mist about word-pictures, to soften 
lines too realistic and to enhance their 
beauty by a beautiful half-concealment* 
Poetic art here disposes of words with 
skill as consummate as that which an 
artist of the brush employs, when he 
drapes, without concealing, the beauty of 
his modeL In this art there is no need to 
transfer a story,— the charm of which is 
personal,— into the impersonal, and there 
to manipulate the "verve poetique out of 
it ; but here, draped with all delicate af- 
fluence, it retains its own wealth of indi- 



25 



viduality, so that minds alike, whether 
ethereal or material are charmed:— 
charmed with that poetic decorum which 
handles a delicate subject with that high- 
bred delineation which is the true beauty 
of all art* The ever softening light in 
the Gallery reveals, yet more and more, 
the wonderful beauty of the page's senti- 
ment,— the wonderful beauty of thoughts 
that breathe and of words that burn,— of 
pauses as eloquent as the sentences ! Like 
rich, picturesque tapestry, the story has 
been fashioned upon a woof almost coarse; 
for such woof lends itself to masterful, 
dramatic representation just as did the 
hempen stuffs to the needle-poets of the 
middle ages* Ah ! those courtly dames, 
who with soft wools, and here and there 
a shimmering thread, stitched pictures 
wherein, though we see a spasmodic rough- 
ness in natures otherwise fine, the poetic 
delineations are through and through suf- 
fused with that uniform coloring which 
gives to every sentiment an underglow as 
pure as it is rich ! 

cA book lies open:— and the eye follows 
a fine line down the page's margin to 
where a thought is set aside,— a trysting 
ground for two ! Companionship grows 
close* Here is granted the privilege to 
take large outlooks into the intellectual 



26 



and spiritual living* of another* The 
privilege to see its possibilities, to feel its 
experiences, its meanings, its realities* 
And through the gleam and splendor of 
these, to see, with no uncertain distinct- 
ness, a personality,— come here, into The 
Purple Gallery, to establish a companion- 
ship;— a companionship independent of 
conditions or circumstances* From 
henceforth these are to see through the 
same window,— from henceforth to wor- 
ship at the same shrines— from henceforth I 
From henceforth to feel the infinite charm 
in discovering how hidden is life,— hidden 
in its openness under the very light that 
makes bright its noonday of social en- 
trettens:— to feel the infinite charm in 
discovering how it speaks its own lan- 
guage, enjoys its own joys, seen and 
not seen, lives alone and not alone* 
Why so difficult the recognition that 
makes such companionship possible? 
Why? There is one heard to answer, 
"The continual deceptions imposed upon 
us by society, called manners, politeness, 
consideration, make our entire life a 
masquerade," wherein " Love itself dares 
not to speak its own language or main- 
tain its own silence*" Here, in The Purple 
Gallery, all this masquerading ends* 

Companionship grows close:— the best 
of two lives, the dross of neither, coalesce 



27 



and make an opalistic virtue,— a gem in 
its own tight,— wherein all the scintillat- 
ing fires of love are safely fused with and 
into, the white light of friendship* A 
gem to be worn upon the brow as upon 
the heart* 

A book lies open /—and the spirit rules! 
Dreamily a white-wonder of a cloud 
floats across a narrow strip of sea:— and 
the morning paints her ensign on the 
vanishing darkness* Nearness grows! 
The old and the new troop into that 
hidden place where Life abides! The 
cramped and confined conditions of ex- 
istence, are gone* From across the nar- 
row strip of sea,— over book and book,— 
nearer, nearer,— till the ear catches the 
clear notes of the old Persian singer- 
singing, come 

44 "With me along the strip of herbage strown, 
That just divides the desert from the sown— 
Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot,— 



A book of verses underneath the bough, 
jug of wine, a loaf of bread —and if 
Beside me singing in the wilderness — 



A jug of wine, a loaf of bread— and Thou 
Beside me singing in the wilderness — 
Oh* wilderness were Paradise enow J 



Wander on, through The Purple Gal- 
lery:— all the books lie open,—a,nd adown 
their pages bloom the snow-white lilies 
of prayer,— the blood-red poppies of 



28 



dreams* The same life:— the same hope; 
—the same want:— 

"A jug of wine* a loaf of bread— and Thou" 

but 

"Into the 'wilderness Love went in search of 
Love— and lost himself " 



29 




HE wind, the r ain, and 
the sunshine permeate 
Natur e, cfcrc# unddurch f 
and, with a minute and 
delicate tenderness, help 
her to develop her beauty, until, 
its perfection warrants some 

44 Wind of the summer morn, 
Tearing the petals in twain, 
Wafting the fragrant soul 
Of the rose through valley and plain," 

to that demesne in which the 
Summer has failed to fulfill the 
promise of the Spring ! 



30 



HEN one being holds 
in completeness the 
imagination of an- 
other, no thir d, from 
whatsoever point of 
the compass he may enter, will 
be able to cast a shadow thereon* 




31 




HERE are possessions 
that sleep, as it wer e, in 
one's bosom, and are 
constantly testifying to 
their nearness by being 
oftenestinone'sthoughts* When 
these thoughts lead to acts they 
are the fullest, the freest, and 
ought to be the best;— with 
thought widening and deepen- 
ing as time goes on* 



32 




O thoughts make their own en- 
vironments, or do the environ- 
ments make thoughts? Try 
turning* the leaves of Thought 
to the rhythm of mighty winds, 
wherein the very pauses are filled with 
the thunder-notes of a coming storm! 
Try turning them to the softer ways of 
Nature,— -where the land ripples, like 
water, away from the hills to lose itself 
in those grassy dells, to which the morn- 
ing breezes come, riding on a witchery of 
white cloud and from which they steal 
away with the perfume of the dells! Try* 



33 



44 Sweet imaginings are as an air > 
A melody some wondrous singer sings." 



34 



"But thoughts are free and visions play, 
Free as the air this Autumn day — 
Yet what they are, I will not say." 
********* 

44 *Tis better ; then the silence grows 
To that degree, you half believe 

It must get rid of what it knows 
Its bosom does so heave*" 



Thoughts there are he will not say* 
Locked in his heart, from the world away : 
None quite worthy on whom to bestow— 
No wonder that, for this I know— 
If the thoughts that swell within his breast 
Are as fond and true as those expressed 
The life that shared them blest would be 
As a ship safe in from a storm-tossed sea* 
/ hear a refrain I it is floating a c way I 
Sweet refrain of the thoughts that he will not say! 

A temple there stands on Arno's banks* 
A thing of beauty* no other ranks: 
Angels dwell within its dome 
To cheer and comfort hearts that roam* 
And when wailing notes from lifeVharp come 
They quickly render the tune once sung* 
Ah ! sweet notes come back from angels among 
And life's harp is his* his again* restrung! 
The refrain comes back, nor floats it a c wa}j f 
cAndmine are the thoughts, that he <will not say* 

From that day to this* from the world hid away 
In the innermost deeps of my soul*— shall I say?— 
Is this harp that I cherish with fondest care 
Lest a chord be broken beyond repair* 
So gently* so softly the breath of a sigh 
Sweeps over this harp* to my soul so nigh* 
That I cry in my joy, u O stay ! O stay ! n 
Sweet refrain of the thoughts that he will not say* 



35 



FANCY there ate a good many- 
people unconsciously repeating 
the mistake of, ♦ ♦ ♦ chopping 
down all the native growths of 
life, clearing the ground of all 
the useless pretty things that seem to 
cumber it, sacrificing everything to 
utility and success* We fell the last 
green tree for the sake of raising an 
extra hill of potatoes ; and never stop 
to think what an ugly, barren place 
we may have to sit in while we eat 
them* The ideals, the attachments— 
yes, even the dreams of youth are 
worth saving* For the artificial tastes 
with which age tries to make good 
their loss grow very slowly and cast 
but a slender shade*" 



36 



F men could judge their fellows un- 
influenced by the atmosphere in 
which circumstances compel some 
to live, then might opinion set it- 
self in high places* Surely it is a 
pity there is not a social Tattersalls where 
the intentions of the knave and the ac- 
tions of the ignorant might be so circum- 
vented that men would receive the rib- 
bons for which their qualifications entitle 
them* And is it not time, O Theoso- 
phist, that the soul of Saint Philip Neri 
be reincarnated to this end? That he 
who was "strict in essentials, indulgent 
in trifles; and who possessed, in a remark- 
able degree, the acuteness necessary to 
distinguish the peculiar merit of every 
character n might be umpire in a question 
so vital that t in settling it, he would earn 
the right to another star for his saintly 
crown* 



37 




HERE are who for a very lit- 
tle of Ophites gold take to 
the shallows, and there are, 
who leaving all the gold of 
Ophir behind them strike 
through the breakers and with a 
courage that turns every drop of the 
surging waters into crown jewels, 
throw the life line aboard some rud- 
derless craft* 




HE wondrous charm of an 
amiable and versatilely 
gifted nature is that it keeps 
the door of its spirit so on 
the latch that the gentlest of 
breezes suffices to swing* it wide 
enough for a glimpse of the Arcadia 
within, or mayhap, wide enough for 
entrance quite, when, lo, we see how 
it is that u the streamlet in the woods 
is full before the dove alights to 
drink at it, the flower in the grass 
expanded before the butterfly comes, 
the grapes ripened in the sun before 
they are plucked for wine*" 



39 



HERE are minds 
that easily enough 
lead captive all 
minds that are 
above the thrall- 
dom of charms personal, be- 
cause such think freest, 
love broadest, feel deepest* 




40 




rVTNATION only can answer 
what purpose is served in the 
transplanting of the animal and 
vegetable kind to that higher 
sphere where, presumably, there 
are no animals, as such, and no vegetables; 
and, divining power being earth-limited, 
there is only the opinion to offer that 
these will feel as awkward on hearing 
the chant of praise intoned to the High- 
est, as they now do when it is said, "Let 
us pray/' And what would the sweet- 
spirited Fra Angelico do did these invade 
his saintly abode? It is safe to guess 
that he would paint for them Circe's isle, 
and in a charity dear to him as to them 
bid them turn to tastes and instincts con- 
genial* 



41 



Splendid, friendly billows, that 
toss two swimmers so far sky- 
ward that they catch sight each 
of each and recognize! 



42 



Laugh !— because a soul would shrink 
From quenching its thirst where the world takes 
drink? 



Aye, lips that are moist with the souFs pure wine 
With thirst would parch, sooner than sit down to 

dine 
At the table of kings where other wine flowed, 
And the love of earth's greatest is freely bestowed* 



I joy to confess it— with rapturous glee — 
And hold high the flagon, dear soul, unto thee* 



43 







NTHUSIASM is 
not an antique to 
be numbered and 
catalogued for a 
museum collection, 
but a charming flower 
bursting into bloom at 
thought of the sun, at touch 
of the sun, and in remem- 
brance of the sun* 




N instant ! It is only a measure 
of time, not at all a gauge of 
force* An instant suffices for 
memory to spring back to a 
loved and ever-to-be-revered re- 
cess* In an instant can be recalled a pas- 
sage of life which may have formed its 
turning point* An instant ! There is an 
eternity of power in an instant* It was 
in an instant that an angel crossed the 
path of the wayfaring Jacob and left him 
with such a blessing that straightway he 
regarded the very ground thereabout* 
sacred* The place of the struggle with 
his celestial visitant was thenceforth to 
him as a spot in heaven, and his memory 
bore a deeper mark of what there took 
place than either the ground* or the stone 
which he there set up to mark it withal* 
The instant goes* but that passage of a 
life the gauge of whose force is not in the 
measure of time allotted to it abides* 



45 



THROUGH THE MISTS OF 
SCOTLAND. 




EAUTIES wild as those of Nor- 
way, gentle as those of Eng- 
land, are lovers in Scotland, and 
most enchantingly bohemian 
in their ways where they meet 
and celebrate their beauty- 
betrothal : for no shy English lassies, in 
kirtle green, ever danced reels with such 
witchery of grace as that which the syl- 
van beauties of England display as they 
come dancing over the border to join the 
Highland laddies at the foot of their 
mountain fastnesses* And here it is, at 
these bewitching festivals of hill and plain 
that the mists produce effects so splendid 
and mysterious; veiling Nature in dis- 
solving hues of emerald, sapphire, ame- 
thyst, and giving to hill and dale a weird, 
supernatural dimness* Through these 
mists bold precipices grow shy, and mod- 
estly recede into cover of the heather- 
grown hills; noisy streams silent, and 
steal away into the seclusion of the glens, 
while these, in turn, slip coyly through 
some opening and lose themselves in the 
heart of the mountains* But push 
through these misty veils, or see them 



46 



gathered into the embraces of the morn- 
ing sun, and the bold precipice will have 
lost none of its boldness, the noisy streams 
none of their noise, and the glens will 
show how, in their seclusion, every rill 
gathers courage and becomes "impetu- 
ous little ladies n that stop not at rock- 
choked channels nor at granite precipices, 
but throw themselves in or over,— free 
Scots, every one # Sometimes it chances 
that one of these finds herself come among 
the docile life of some bit of meadow land 
where she may no more than,— with a 
decorous caprice,— cut it into fantastic 
shapes and glide with murmurs prayerful 
around the quiet circle drawn to enclose 
withal, a sanctuary for the deer of the 
forest; then, under cover of birch and 
pine, out and away again to join the wa- 
ters of the Dee, singing the while : 

44 The Pine is king of Scottish woods, 
The queen ? Ah 1 who is she ? 
The fairest form the forest kens. 
The bonny Birken tree/' 

Or sometimes, such "impetuous little 
lady" loiters under these same pines and 
birches to persuade the mosses and ferns 
to a more demonstrative display of their 
pretty charms, inducing them to come out 
from their snug nurseries, and join vines 
and lichens in their hearty clambering 



47 



among: the rocks: or sometimes all this 
merrymaking stops and the "little lady" 
is held in durance by the frost, until the 
stag, that monarch of the forest, comes 

"to break with his foot, of a morning, 
A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice 
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice, 
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold, 
And another and another, and faster and faster, 
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled*" 

Aye! bonnie land of mists and myths 
mysterious, of lochs and mountains in- 
finite, of shires where wild and gentle 
beauty keep unending tryst, well may a 
poet-lover sing of thee, 

44 beloved are thy mountains,— 
Round their white summits though elements war : 
Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing 
fountains, 
I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar." 



48 



ITH a clear in- 
stinct of true art, 
a firm, free brush 
ought to be able 
to bring out Na- 
ture's every glow, however 
the darkening clouds enveii 
it* 




49 




g-«j ITCH your tent by the 
j$ J| rivet's side, and—if you 
must — grope your way 
through the dull reach- 
es of gloom that settle 
along its course, but, shut not 
your eyes to the far stretches of 
beauty to be seen on the up- 
lands and through the sky line's 
rent* 



50 




XPLANATION, illustra- 
tion, of what use these to 
the mind that recognizes? 
Or to the mind that does 
not? Superfluous to the one, 
to the other useless, conveying, as 
they do, to a dull understanding 
nothing more than a dull knowledge, 
to recognition nothing to enhance 
recognition* 



51 



It would indeed be a Sibet ian- 
lifce existence not to find 
warmth on the hearthstone of 
Remembrance* 



52 



There Site no ideals too fine to 
live with, but a host of them 
too fine to be realized* Were it 
not so, all human dramas would 
end in joy* 



53 




AYS one, "Fatal to happiness is 
the combination of a penetrating 
intellect with a heart which feels 
acutely the truths which that 
intellect lays bare/'— but this is 
supposing that the heart has feeling for 
unhappy truths only, otherwise a pene- 
trating intellect could but intensify the 
heart's feelings^ 






54 



The gift of discernment gives 
to its possessor no joy equal to 
that of discerning the balance, 
measure, and rhythm of some 
one souL 



55 



QUICK imagina- 
tion loves a de- 
lightful sugges- 
tion as a sculptor 
the roughhewn 
stone in which, at a glance, 
he sees the splendid thing it 
will yield to his chisel* 




56 



KING. 



One crossed the bor der 
Of the Land of Dr earns : nor stayed, 
But bent his steps to where a temple — 
Half removed — stood by the margin of a lake, 
Alone. 

"With hand outstretched 
To ask by gentle knock admission,— 
As humblest knight might do,— 
"When, softly on its hinges, swung 
The temple's door, and there, 
With downcast eyes and timid grace 
One questioned, ""Why, Sire, for entrance ask? 
Dost thou not wear the signet ring ? 
And, art thou not of all this land and temple, 

King?" 
Then answered he, — with look most reverent, 
E'en pleading, grown,— 

u 'Tis true, 
Fair Lady, that I wear the signet ring : 
But come I here in quest of crown ; 
No king is wholly king till he be crowned." 
Then she, with changing color on her brow and 

cheek, 
u And is it so that yet thou dost possess 
No crown ? — and that, the one, — the one,— 
Just there— beyond— " :(and pointing 
To a veil, a shimmering veil, 
"Which like to that between the outer and the inner 

court 
Of Solomon's great temple hung) — 
44 Beyond — is thine ? ♦ ♦ ♦ Thy crown to wear ? " 
Then he, with joy of answered searching, 
4 * Thou sayst 'tis there ?— Thou ♦ ♦ ♦ say'st ♦ ♦ ♦ 
Just there — beyond ? 



57 



< 



"Wilt lead me, Lady fair ? . ♦ ♦ ♦ 
My arm about thee,— so :— not for support— 
But to make sure that thou indeed 
Art leading me. Thou ! ♦ ♦ ♦ So, see, I follow I 
See, ♦ ♦ ♦ See ! — I walk with thee ! ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 
And all thy flowing draperies of filmy lace 
Clinging and shaping themselves to thy soft 

motion ! — 
Ah ! what king ever trod his way to throne 

Like this I ♦ • ♦ ♦ 

Look up,— mine own,— look up into mine eyes— 
Ah!— 'tis true!— 'tis true!— I seel— See!— 

♦ ♦♦♦ Thine eyes ! — 

So wondrous deep !— Down 

In their liquid deeps I see,— thy soul ! — 

Thy very soul ! w hat see'st thou in mine ? 

My soul, or, thine ?— Thou canst not tell ? 

in or !♦—♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦ * ♦ ♦ 

But, ah, thine eyes I— What wondrous eyes ! 

Look on!— Art leading me ? or, dost thou follow? 

What matter,— mine,— look on ! ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Look on I— Take not thy hand from mine ! ♦ ♦ ♦ 
. • ♦ ♦ The veil?— Aye, true:— yet not thy hand 

alone!— 
See,— thus in mine,— in mine !— Together! " 



The veil* soft, shimmering, 

Fell to place again* 



58 



It would be graceless ingrati- 
tude in him who has found joy- 
to fail to make rejoicings and 
to invoke blessings* 



59 



O be in a position 
that exempts one 
from the results of 
circumstances ex- 
traordinary, is to 

enjoy a royal reprieve from 

discipline* 




60 



T is only now 
and then that 
we may cut 
through the 
gordian knot of 
things; for the most 
part we must with pa- 
tient fingers untie it* 



61 



N emergencies nature is 
too swift in its actions for 
the cooperation of the 
more or less deliberate 
will, and so commits that 
" worse than a crime, a blunder/' 
But, it is thus that experience is 
gained. 



62 



r is a brave spirit that can 
go on living among the 
tatters and rags of other 
men's doings* To such a 
spirit there is a wonder 
side, a sort of mosaic, wherein if 
one bit is somber another is full 
of color ; and so the Master's de- 
sign is made perfect* 



63 



F you may not be spared 
from the orchestra in 
which you have signed a 
life contract,— not for one 
hour spared,— how are 
you not to hear the dissonance 
when your associates play out 
of time and tune ? In that most 
beautiful of the Saint Cecilias 
she listens to a chorus that she 
sees not, in the air above* 



64 




HE necessary in most de- 
partments of life over- 
laps and even effaces 
the contingent, and un- 
der the ruling of this 
autocratic tyrant beautiful 
wishes and strong desires are 
alike helpless to serve the crea- 
ture man t - unless it be at inter- 
vals, when he is allowed to come 
to the surface for one refreshing 
breathe 



65 




T was up among the fastnesses of 
the Grampians, where "the winds 
had been so tempestuous that the 
eagles had forsaken their nests/' 
that we began wishing for the 
softer ways of the south wind and 
dreaming dreams of 

—a far away land, 
A land of glory and shimmering sand, 
"Where soft are the nights and clouds unseen, 
The land of the Pharaohs,— the land of our dream! 

But we dreamed not that that wind, so 
tempestuous, would follow us down from 
Scotland's hills to make u weather " in the 
Bay of Biscay, gather force among the 
Spanish Sierras, and toss us with as little 
ceremony as it had the eagles from their 
nests, into the very Bay of Algiers* Sure- 
ly no old pirate of these seas ever intro- 
duced his captives to this beautiful bit of 
water with a courtesy so rude as this of 
our north wind, and most surely no cap- 
tive of them all ever greeted the freeboot- 
er's harbor with such delight* Algiers!— 
the pearl ! The Arabs are fond of com- 
paring this gem of their country to a dia- 
mond in an emerald setting, but the fig- 
ure impoverishes the richness of a scene 
that is soft and warm with life and throb- 
bing with the fulness of life* ♦ ♦ ♦ The 
emerald green of the hills does not hold 



66 



this white, glistening* Algerine gem as a 
setting its diamond, but allows the gem 
to sink into the soft greenness as grace- 
fully as an anemone into the green waters 
of the sea* u See the Bay of Naples and 
die " is a proverb ; See Algiers and her 
bay and live I is a truth* Live to climb 
the terracelike ways of the hills' far tops 
and look away to the foot of the Atlas 
mountains that lie beyond the verdant 
plain of the Metidja,— live to wander 
from mosque to villa that hide themselves 
in the sylvan recesses on the gentle slopes 
of the Sahel,— live to loiter about the 
roadways that overhang the sea at one 
point, and are at another lost in forest 
recesses,— live to lie upon the shell-strewn 
beach that stretches between the sea and 
those gardens of palms and aloes, of 
orange and lemon,— gardens Arcadian,— 
that make of Mustafa Superieur a para- 
dise spot,— live to drift back by starlight, 
from Cape Matifou through twelve miles 
of water liquid gold,— yes, live to see all 
this and more, in a land where Nature 
wears that marvelous yasmack which is 
made by the mists of the sea, the blue of 
the sky, the radiance of the sun, the soft- 
ness of the stars; and which makes of 
her a beauty truly ravissante* Through 
this shimmering veil we had our first vi- 
sion of Oriental beauty, and in the light of 



67 



that vision our little boat weighed anchor , 
stood out to sea, and spread her sails to 

Skirt the shores of that sea most fair,— 

To drink the sweet fragrance that filled the air,— 

To rock safe at anchor within the bay 

Where Carthage* proud queen gave shelter one day 

To the ships of a lover,— faithless he 

As the waves that drove him in from the sea* 

Then, away to the land where no cloud dwells, 

And again the sails the full breeze swells* 

Oh, rapturous life, beyond compare ! — 
Fill the cup brimming,— a bounteous share, 
And drink to the life and the love of to-day 
As we sail toward the Nile-land, the Nile-land 
away! 



68 




EEP faith with pretty 
tr adit ions,— imagine 
veiled beauty to be all 
that it appears,— super- 
latively beautiful,— and 
the unveiled reals of the Occi- 
dent will be transformed into 
something like the veiled ideals 
of the Orient* 



69 




N Eastern legend tells, how when 
Paradise faded from earth a 
single rose was saved and treas- 
ured by an angel, who gives to 
every mortal, sooner or later, 
one breath of fragrance from the immor- 
tal flower, one alone* 

I thought all roses perished 

With the paradise that went, 

Nor dreamed an angel cherished 

"With one, the dear intent, 

To some day, sooner, later, give 

The heavenly breath and bid me live* 

I breathed that one, that one alone, 

Life-breath by angel given,— 

And heard the words,— "It shall atone 

For all thou si lost and striven /' 

The angel spoke blest words to me : 

I listened, looked, and, lo I 'twas thee! 



70 



Imagination paints all 
portraits, that it loves, 
miniature fine* 



71 



TALY has no more shrines at 
which to pray, no more saints to 
whom to pray than has a nature 
which, Italy like, glows in a glory 
of light and color in the morning 
of desires and languishes in a soft radi- 
ance in the evening of their setting* To 
such a nature the ideal possesses a charm 
as potent in the fading radiances as in 
the glowing ones: and its prayers being 
not less idealistic at the shrine whose light 
shines dimly through the gathering mists, 
its fervor is not less than when it knelt at 
that one whose every stone was effulgent 
with the light of the morning sun* 



72 



^ 



F it is with true reverence 
that we press our fore- 
heads Vainst the earth 
before the shrines of Na- 
ture, we will not come 
short in making" respectful obei- 
sance before the brick and mor- 
tar altars of the world* 






73 




ET not Heresy sit beside you 
in the pleasant places of 
thought, for it is a subtle 
artist, and will as surely set 
up in forest glade as in ca- 
thedral nave that image which is 
from head to feet of gold and pre- 
cious metals ; but the feet being of 
base material —clay— at a stroke it 
will fall* Rather look up through 
the forest leaves to the stars and in 
them read the everlasting truth* 



74 



Quarrel with no circumstance 
of pleasure, be it in the embryo 
of an anticipation or in a real- 
ity but half consummating the 
anticipation* 



75 




LUE skies, bluer seas, a long 
stretch of African mountains, 
past the smokeless cone of Etna, 
sky and sea, and then, in the dis- 
tance delicately and firmly cut 
in the yellow and crimson of the Eastern 
sky,— Egypt, the Nile land, the land of 
our dreams ! 

44 Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands 
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea— 
How long they kiss!— in sight of all the lands,— 
Ah, longer, longer we ! 

Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, 
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,— 

And Cleopatra's night drinks all* 'Tis done* 
Love, lay thy hand in mine/' 

Yes, look,— look off across the sallow 
sands, and see how these come creeping, 
creeping to the very borders of that mys- 
terious River ! The old Land' s life ! See 
how, sphinxlike, "the mighty fallen n 
are crouching in the deeps of that sallow 
sand, warming their broken hearts against 
the old Land's breast, and taking the hot 
kiss of great Ra and the soft embrace of 
lovely Isis with a grace not less proud 
than when they stood in prime of glory 
on these same sallow sands* It is only 
solemn Osiris that has grown more 
solemn and keeps watch with more of 
silence beside Mer,— beloved,— and Mena's 



76 



shadowy figure hovers in deeper shadow 
over the borderland of history and tradi- 
tion* These all are here* but where are 
Thoth* Anubis* Horus* Hathor ? Where 
Saf and Khem* Hek and Seb? And 
where* O where* loveliest goddess of the 
land* Ma* with her scales of Justice and 
her scepter of Truth ? Gone ? Gone* and 
not gone*— but kneeling deep in the 
Desert's sands* or close to thy mysterious 
waters* O thou River of life to the land 
of the Pharaohs! Memphis* Thebes* 
Karnak* all kneeling*— standing*— in their 
mighty grandeur while the Nile pulses by 
them and between the soft green of the 
pasture lands;— holding in abeyance the 
shifting sands of the Great Desert* A 
narrow strip* these pasture lands* with a 
hungry world feeding on them: a wide 
stretch* that scorched Desert* with a no less 
hungry world searching for food* But 
the Arab loves his desert; loves it none 
the less because of hunger*— wanders 
among its silences* slakes his thirst at the 
well by the palm's roots* stretches himself 
to rest in the cool green of its oasis*— 
makes it all his*— this far-reaching Desert* 
—and leaves it only when he goes to sing 
under some latticed window* 

" I love thee* I love but thee*" 

But it is the sound of a mighty chorus 



77 



that we hear* The chorus of the centu- 
ries ! Hear it, as it comes sweeping down 
the River past Karnak, past Thebes, past 
Memphis,— sweeping through the pylons' 
splendid arches, through the temples' 
empty chambers, through the tombs' grim 
silences— sweeping down and around the 
Pyramids and the Sphinx,— sweeping 
across the dumb Desert,— sweeping down, 
ever adown the River,— the River !— until 
it breaks its mighty volume along the 
shores of the Sea and we hear the prom- 
ise,— the promise of the chorus of the 
centuries,— 

44 Till the sun grows cold, 
cAnd the stars are old, 
cAnd the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold I " 

Then these shall stand, shall kneel, shall 
warm their broken hearts against their 
Mother's breast, shall feel the kiss of the 
Sun-god and the embrace of Luna's 
lovely goddess,— shall feel all this 

" Till the sun grows cold/'— 
shall know all this 

" Till the stars are old,"~ 
shall live all this 

44 Till the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold! " 



78 



Such the promise of the chorus of the 
centuries ! Hear ye, hear ye, O ye gods 
of Egypt?— 

" Till the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold! " 



79 



"The river is lost, if the ocean it miss ; 
If the sea miss the river, what matter? n 



80 



What becomes of Philosophy when 
the eyes must see other sights than the 
dear little delights that so contented 
them?— for though 

Time counts for naught when folded 
Back upon itself, the days stand full revealed ! 
And all the coming ones unroll 
Along the path we tread : 

yet halcyon days do have the necromancer's 
skill to conjure up, at will, these "dear 
little delights n with a pathos too tender 
for Philosophy's handling* 



81 



Give to a chance beginning 
the breeze of fortunate circum- 
stance, and you are possessed of 
that blessed thing called Provi- 
dence* 



82 




HEN two lives are 
mixed by the same 
force they do not 
readily resolve apart 
again; and if that 
force has taken a hand in mix- 
ing the wishes, desires, affections, 
and purposes of these lives, it 
will take more than the separa- 
tion of body from body to re- 
solve them apart* 



83 




HE trouble and pain of dis- 
tance is that the fine splin- 
ters of lives wrenched apart 
stretch out and feel contin- 
ually the numbness and 

chill of separation ; but the pleasure 

and joy of it is to 

"See how I come, unchanged, unworn! — 
Feel where my life broke off from thine, 
How fresh the splinters keep and fine,— 
Only a touch and we combine I " 



84 



Such a starved bank of moss 

Till, that May morn 
Blue ran the flash across : 

Violets were born ! 

Sky— what a scowl of cloud 

Till, near and far, 
Ray on ray split the shroud : 

Splendid, a star I 

World— how it walled about 

Life with disgrace 
Till God's own smile came out : 

That was thy face ! 



Robert ^rawning^ 



85 




HEN Robert Browning 
died, this world shrunk to 
a commoner evenness* In 
his life was the flame of 
the u old and dear/' and 
heat enough to fuse soul and flesh 
into a being worthy to be called a 
man ! ♦ ♦ ♦ And when some hand 
wrote (and left it on his grave)* 
"Yes* I give thee highest praise 
when I say* through thee I am 
nearer to God*" that hand wrote for 
many* 



86 



Balance, measure, rhythm! 
Listen when these come togeth- 
er to play in the orchestra of a 
single life, and you will hear a 
symphony* 



87 




HE history of a woman made 
famous on the sacred page by 
the fulfillment of a mission that 
was laid upon her tells also of 
how she was possessed of that 
beauty which equipped her for 
any call within a woman's sphere and, 
in this special mission, out of it* The 
story reads, u She clothed herself with the 
garments of her gladness and put sandals 
on her feet, and took her bracelets and 
corslets and rings and adorned herself with 
all her ornaments: and the Lord also 

fave her more beauty" — " exceedingly 
eautiiul" is the epithet on the sacred 
page* She added to native beauty rich 
and varied ornament, and* together the 
natural and the superficial equipped her 
for her mission* The story is as old as 
the page on which it is recorded ; and the 
idea holds that beauty and such orna- 
mentation as may enhance it, are a wo- 
man's natural right, nor are they, when 
kept under a rule of a sweet decorum, 
the helpers or cause of the untrue— that 
untruth which springs from the corrupt 
nature of man when fostered by the most 
delusive of senses, sight* Mere plastic 
beauty, with its more or less of added 
ornament, has in itself no distinct power 
over minds that recognize soul in its 
classic outline* To such, ornamentation 



88 



holds that relative value which the dra- 
peries that an artist uses have to the 
statue* It is the statue, pure and simple 
in its classic lines, that holds the charm : 
the draperies are accessory* The intel- 
ligence, the tact, the grace to subordinate 
afl accessories to the real, to the true 
beauty of the mind and heart, to give to 
each its classic finish, to make all coa- 
lesce and harmonize, is a gift,— is God's 
beauty,— the rarest of gifts, and is a 
beauty not to be concealed by those dra- 
peries which a woman in her love of the 
beautiful employs* It is not the material 
form nor any adornment of it that works 
the charm all-powerful, but the mind, the 
soul* These seem to touch the body* as it 
were, with their grace, and it becomes a 
beautiful expression of God's beauty* 
This is the beauty that is a glory to the 
awakened mind, an enigma to the un- 
awakened* Busy as the world is in dis- 
cerning and comparing the beauty of 
women, few recognize the source of its 
power and fewer appreciate the real power 
there is in the harmonious blending of the 
two forces, the within and the without* 
It is when this blending is absolutely har- 
monious that we have the type, perfect, 
beauty in classic outline* The possessor 
of this sequence of beauty must be content 
with the epithets u handsome/' u refined/' 



89 



"cultivated," mindful that it is not given 
to every social astronomer, however per- 
severing in research, to see how " one star 
dif f ereth from another star in glory/' 



90 



Oh woman! Lovely woman ! Nature made thee 
To temper man : we had been brutes without you ; 
Angels are painted fair, to look like you : 
There's in you all that we believe of heaven, 
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, 
Eternal joy and everlasting love* 

Thomas Cfouav. 
1682. 



91 




O !pen, ancient or modem, has 
given so delicate a delineation 
of love's experiences as that of 
Aristophanes, the Greek satir- 
ist* Aristophanes meets Pe- 
trarch in Elysium and questions 
him about Dante and himself ♦ Petrarch 
answers, u I had now for a long time been 
furnishing my mind with much impor- 
tant knowledge, some of which I had al- 
ready given to the world in books, when 
thai Laura, (quella Laura), of whom I 
have spoken, came into my view* I do 
not know how it was that now all these 
thoughts of mine, scattered before in many 
directions, came suddenly together, into 
one mass, and turned themselves upon this 
one woman, so that she became the master 
of my intellect more than I myself* No 
other object was before my eyes : I saw 
Laura only* One glance of hers, a sigh, 
a smile, her pose, began to be to me things 
of moment, so that I gave myself up to 
portraying them in verse* Nor can I ac- 
count for it how everything I had ever 
gained by study was forthwith turned 
into use to ornament the pictures I made* 
These were seen by men, and they were 
pleased with them; and so to the stimulus 
of love was joined that of fame* From 
thenceforth I felt myself ever more and 
more animated and transported both by 



92 



impulse and ef fort, so that I devoted my- 
self entirely to painting her and me* 
Then I studied my own heart as people 
study books, only with much more dili- 
gence; and by this self -study and self- 
acquaintance, I discovered in my heart, in 
its every slightest movement, whether of 
hope, of fear, of grief —of every feeling, in 
fine— an infinity of circumstances with 
which to embellish and increase my in- 
ward affections, and with which I quickly 
colored them and put them into words, 
thus giving outward form to my inward 
feelings and making a picture of them* 
Thus it came to pass that every man who 
saw the representation of what he felt 
within himself stopped to look, finding 
in my pictures the similitude of his own 
feelings; and in his wonder that every 
inmost impulse could be thus clothed in 
palpable substance (potesse a<vere tanto 
corpo) he exclaimed, in recognizing the 
portrait, 'How true!'" Aristophanes 
here tells Petrarch that the great success 
he met in the popularity of his work was 
because he had handled a subject that was 
not only universal but a u common vice ff 
— (il c vizio comune) at which Petrarch ex- 
claims, " No, no, Aristophanes ! not vice* 
I would have you know that in regard 
to the passion of love I depict naught 
else than that which is noble, courteous, 



93 



graceful* In nature there are many 
aspects— infinite beauty, great ugliness: 
but he who would copy her should select 
the beautiful in her; and he who does not 
cannot be called a good artist, but is one 
of those painters who make a likeness 
from defects, lends his brush to dispropor- 
tions, and produces ugliness,— nature car- 
icatured* From such work, as from fire, 
I keep clear/' Having thus defended 
himself and his art against the charge of 
vice, Petrarch proceeds to question why 
it was and how it was that Laura had 
spoiled his appreciation of objects attrac- 
tive, his eyes seeing one object only,— 

" Sul una donna. <veggio f el suo bel <viso." 

With Petrarch it was personal beauty 
that touched the soul's chord; with many 
another man, mien, manner, sense, senti- 
ment* Soul-traits of inborn nobleness 
have been as all-inspiring and as potent 
to make a man cry 

44 Sul una. donna. <veggio, el suo bel <visol " 

for, from whatever its conception, Platonic 
love— an innocent name for a very com- 
plicated misery— is easily nurtured* It is 
only needful that a beauty pleasing to 
the mind of a lover pass before his real 
or mental vision, and the elevation to the 



94 



throne of the senses or of the soul begins* 
In gentle, courteous speech, mind gets an 
index of mind ; and if the gifts of that 
mind are rare enough, gentle speech will 
make them, as it were, translucent not 
only in words but in every accompanying 
attitude* However patrician these gifts 
may be, courtesy and modesty will play 
noble parts, and sentiment will throw its 
multicolored light upon the scene and call 
the two, 

44 born the whole wide world apart," 

to recognize , and to 

44 read life's meaning in each other's eyes/' 

Then comes the suffusion of delicate feel- 
ings, partly harmonious, partly sympa- 
thetic, and the mind is in a glow* So far 
all may have been spontaneous, natural, 
but it is here that a battle is to be fought 
if the affections are not to be allowed 
further advance* Will now takes "a 
hand n and the mind concurs and acts so 
that what was spontaneous becomes pur- 
pose* The affections are stimulated to 
an infinite degree just as a flame will as- 
cend if the hot coals, smoldering under 
ashes, are fanned by a wind* And this 
is precisely what Petrarch did: he stirred 
the ashes and, as his sonnets show, 



95 



kept fanning them until the delicious 
agitation became all-powerful, and will 
and reason powerless, at the helm of a life 
driven before such a tempests Such the 
life of Petrarch and such that of Heloise 
—deepest souled woman ! Petrarch took 
to poetry, Heloise to piety ; but they had, 
like Hercules, wrapped about them the 
flaming vesture— no relief— the story of 
its pain and its pleasure alike, in three 
words, 

"Sat una donna. / " 
Un sol uomo I 



96 




ET poets pierce Nature's gloom 
and flood her beauty with the 
transcendent light of their poetic 
imaginations; but go not to them 
for the moral law, nor for that 
sublime truth which underlies law* They 
are not lawgivers unless it be on Love, 
and then they write law for that phase of 
love which is oftener traced on the sands 
of earth than that which is written on 
the vault of heaven ; and* besides* they 
have special genius for introducing pret- 
tily phrased heresies which come to per- 
vade belief like the pure white mists that 
rise among the mountains and settle over 
the lower heights* Such mists do not 
stop life or its duties* but they do prevent 
those in them from an all-embracing view* 
and* above all* prevent a view of that 
sunlight which does so glorify the upper 
air,— above the mists,— and in which the 
true poet, living ever in the sunlight of 
his own high endowments, must rejoice* 
These heresies are more often the result 
of poetic license than of intent to dim 
that spiritual vision which needs, in com- 
ing from oblivion into light, to see the 
full glory of the Throne of Love* 



97 




PHILOSOPHY finds the ulti- 
jp j mate meaning of the uni- 
verse under the notion of the 
ego; poetry looks through 
the worlds of time and space 
as through a sublime symbol to the 
eternal beauty ; morality, as the vic- 
torious struggle of the personal soul 
after righteousness, discovers God 
through life* We need philosophy 
with its notion, and poetry with its 
symbol, and morality with its life* 
These three great expressions of the 
human spirit must ever remain/' 



98 



Romance,— would it differ so 
materially today from yesterday 
did the press and the telegraph 
not deny to hero and heroine 
the wearing of the impersonal 
domino ? 



99 



I would have five mottoes: so, I turn to you, 
"Who are ever in touch with the old and the new, 
And you answer, taking my hand : 
44 First, a command,— 

' Mark the hours thai shine* 
And choose you in their light a friendship, fine/ 

Second, a prayer,— 

And feel you how it fills the air J— 

' Let me dream my dream I ' — 
Fills the air, and holds you hea<ven and earth 
between I 

Third, a promise 
(That sounds like a bliss ! ), 

' All things come to those c who <wait I * 
And this leads straightway to the Fourth,— the gate 
At <which I linger,— to whisper in your ear, 
*My happiest moments center here/ 
Now, prithee, you the Fifth on me bestows 
Hear I?- 

For warmth and shelter where to go 

/ kncRV I I kno<w I ' * 



100 



SAINT GEORGE'S DAY, 



Some wind blew a flower 

(Aye, know I from where ! )♦ 
It fell at my feet, 

on the still evening air* 
I caught it, and whispered : 

Bright one, thou must go 
On a journey this night, 

and bestow 
A joy— pure as thyself! — 

Hark!— No footsteps draw near?— 

Then, sweet one, thU token I ♦ ♦ 
That's all. He'll know - 
At eve, morn, or noontide, 
In cloister or hall, 
Who's there by his side," 



101 



HIS MADONNA* 



What thought the master 
When he fixed this angel face 
In sky of gold?— here, in holy place,— 
The clouds soft, filmy, as her falling lace. 

Thought he that men would come 
With reverence, her royal state to see ? 
And seeing, turn in prayer— as she— 
Their eyes,— beyond the place,— and fall 

on bended knee ? 

'Tis true, 
That so the master thought :— 
And thus the inspiration, caught 
Fire to brush,— and lo, he painted as 

God taught. 



102 



HIS CROWN, 



See, how it glows 
(Full mercy God bestows) 
Glows with heaven's imprisoned light, 
Now finished is the earthly fight,— 
And pinioned full, his soul above 
Floats ever, in God's light and love. 



103 



It is said that if we do but live 
long enough we will find in the 
memories of a welded friendship 
the only point at which thought 
comes in joyous touch with 
human life* 



104 



Memory glows along the sky line. 
Dyes the clouds of life like wine, 
Leads us through her sacred temples, 
Stays our feet by every shrine, 

Catches quickly each low heart moan, 
Clasps us in her arms, alone, 
"Whispers softly of a future 
That would surely all atone* 

Thus in tenderest pity does she 
Call, or woo a hope for us, 
Mindful ever, gentle spirit, 
That all hope is one with trust* 



105 



N a disappointment that is all 
disappointment a pure bitter 
remains that no after sweet 
will take away, which leaves 
the taste unimpaired,— no 
mixed flavor of half pleasure, but 
pure and fine, without taint of com- 
mon sweets* And yet to determine 
to save one's self the pure bitter of a 
disappointment by denying one's self 
the sweet sipping at an anticipation 
is to lose, u most like/' all pleasure* 



106 



UT satisfaction to a cru- 
cial test, and it will be 
found to consist of but 
little more than that a 
swallow feels in dipping 
its beak, or sweeping the surface 
of the lake with its wing; and 
yet, there are deep satisfactions* 




107 



What the light of day fails 
to discover is, in some night, 
by the altar's lamp, revealed* 



108 



THE VOICE OF IMPATIENCE. 



Say when,— for the year is wearing on, 
And the days are gray, and all time is long, 
And the leaves that reddened in Autumn's glow 
Are fallen and sere on the earth below* 



THE VOICE OF PROMISE. 



Hist ! under these leaves are the reds of life, 
Waiting and watching, aglow and rife 
For the chance to burst, with Love's first kiss^ 
The bands of winter, and drink spring's bliss ! 



109 




F what use is wishing, earnest 
wishing: ? Endless good* What 
else so sets the soul athrob and 
pushes the clay of existence into 
Pisgah heights?— those glorious 
heights from which pathways lead to left 
and right and the zigzag roadways lead 
on to the to-be-revealed ! These heights 
attained, wishing takes on the dignity of 
purpose, the mind takes large range, and 
the will gives free rein,— the mists lift or 
fall away into the swamp lands far be- 
low, while the clear waters of the upland 
lake reflect a face made fair by bathing 
its dust's seamed lines* Nature, on these 
heights, has no cals-de-sac, all open and 
free,— and all day long from crest of rock 
and lap of dell edelweiss and rose send 
greetings on the lips of the breeze, and 
the paradise bird sings to its mate, 

I love thee* yes* love thee* 
My sweetest mate dear ! 
And love thee, and love thee 
For singing so clear*— 
For singing thy song* Love, 
Alone to my ear ! 



110 




EART-WISHES, say the 
Italians, are senza misura,— 
not measured, not to be 
measured* Such wishes hav- 
ing the impulse of their own 
native vitality dilating* spontaneous- 
ly, no people ought to know better 
the senza misura of them than the 
children of a soil in which Nature 
dilates with a beauty and spontane- 
ity that is without measure* 



m 



WHERE ART THOU ? 



I listen— listen— lifting up my heart,— 
I look and see thee near and yet apart,— 
Feel thee close and ever near to me— 
Afar, yet near,— and, looking, looking, see 
My love alone :— the world unseen— 
My own I— though hundreds stand between^ 



112 




HE Seafzen Allee is to be closed* 
Closed— beautiful vista that it is ! 
From an acor n, so to say, grew 
the branching oaks that shade it, 
far-reaching these, deep-rooted, 
festooned, too, and garlanded to topmost 
twig with, ah ! so delicate a vine* Poetry 
has graced this path, and will again, but 
till she comes again Philosophy,— stalwart 
guard to all virtues and one who helps 
them to blend in due and proper propor- 
tion—shall walk the Allee alone* There, 
arm in arm with this sage, Memory will 
search out Poetry's steps, and Memory 
too shall take her sun bath in the light 
that filters through the branches* And 
then Memory and Philosophy shall laugh 
with the neighboring brook because there 
is one thing on earth too choice to have a 
counterpart ! The beginning was chance 
and incident,— and Philosophy and Mem- 
ory know how to make the most of these, 
—and walking arm in arm through the 
now closed Allee shall determine whether 
this whole which has eventuated so per- 
fectly is the fortune come from chance or 
from Providence* 



113 




S ideal loveliness is to tlie 
sculptor, faith is to the heart, 
—faith rightly understood 
extends over all the works 
of the Creator, whom we 
can know but through belief;— it 
embraces a calm confidence in our- 
selves, and a serene repose as to our 
future,— it is the moonlight that 
sways the tides of the human sea/' 



114 



THE SONG OF FAITH. 



Athwart the sky to farthest reach 
Clouds, full of storm, pile each on each, 
But, close along the horizon's line 
A light flames upward,— all divine! — 
A light from altar, thine and mine* 

Speak gently, ca.ro, 

soft and low, 

Rca.ro, caro mio I 

Now, hand in hand, we watch the sky 
And see its storm clouds passing by, 
Dispelled by rays of heavenly light 
That makes a day of darkest night, 
And drapes Love's couch all gold and bright. 

Breathe softly, caro, 

soft and low, 

li caro, caro mio I 

O rapturous night ! — O glorious day ! — 
What ransom is too dear to pay 
For joy and freedom such as this! 
A joy that's life,— no dream of bliss,— 
A freedom God-sealed with a kiss. 

Sing sweetly, caro, 

sweet and low, 

U caro, caro mio I 



115 



FATE. FAITH* 




OME WHERE in every experi- 
ence these highways intersect, and 
it is of the utmost interest to note 
what effect the experiences that 
have led up to this point of inter- 
section is to have upon the choice made* 
If they have hardened— made unbeautiful 
the outlook into life— and are naturally 
pessimistic* temperament will throw its 
weight of influence into the choice* and 
then will the eyes of Fate see 

44 Only a driving wreck* 
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck 
With anguished face and flying hair 
Grasping the rudder hard* 

Still bent to make some port he knows not where* 
Still standing for some false* impossible shore* 
And sterner comes the roar 

Of sea and wind* and through the deepening gloom 
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom* 
And he too disappears* and comes no more*" 

But if these experiences* whatever their 
nature* have made the soul cry out* 
44 Though he slay me* yet will I trust in 
him*" the eyes of Faith will see the 
rainbow of promise in any sky and the 
voice proclaim* 



116 



44 1 go to prove my soul 1 
I see my way as birds their trackless way* 
I shall arrive !— "What time, what circuit, 
I ask not ; •••••• 

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive : 

He guides me and the bird. In His good time ! n 

••••••■•••• 

" Be sure that God 

Ne'er dooms to waste the strength He deigns im- 
part," 



117 



A FATE. 



It ploughed through her life 

With a furrow so deep, 
That venture she dare not, 

Except in her sleep, — 
When in holy somnambulance 

God leads her unharmed 
To where, in His goodness, 

She wakens rearmed* 



118 




AKE from the Infinite 
reality this show under 
which it appears in time 
and space, pierce back- 
ward to the Eternal un- 
der this phenomenal pageant, 
and then our conceptions at their 
best answer to, are but the 
thought-side of, the ultimate and 
everlasting truth/' 



119 



The larger the deposit of 
sadness in a nature, the eas- 
ier is that nature stirred by 
pathetic thought* 



120 



Let time and chance combine, combine, 
Let time and chance combine : 
The fairest love, from Heaven above, 
That love of yours was mine, 

My dear, 
That love of yours was mine* 

The past is fled and gone, and gone, 
The past is fled and gone : 
If naught but pain to me remain 
Pll fare in memory on, 

My dear, 
Pll fare in memory on* 

Thomas Carlyle. 



If sorrow, 
In the nobler sort, 
Bears semblance to despair, 
And every thought from out the heart 
Is worded like a prayer, 
And every wish is carried swift 
To Him who reigns above, 
It is because, through time and chance, 
I've kept unharmed thy love* 



121 



OWEVER delight- 
fully merry a mem- 
ory of yesterday, 
we laugh heartiest 
when our feet are 
racing over the beach of life 
made smooth and fine by 
the tide of the happy today* 




122 



"If life be not that which without us we find— 
Chance, accident merely— but rather the mind, 
And the soul which, within us, surviveth these 

things, 
If our real existence have truly its springs 
Less in that which we do than in that which we 

fed," 



then 



u Time is a fiction, and limits not fate* 

Thought alone is eternal* Time thralls it in vain* 

For the thought that springs upward and yearns to 

regain 
The pure source of spirit, there is no TOO LATE." 



CHE SERA, SERA* 



A shadow in morning 

comes not from above, 
But creeps to our feet 

from below, my love, — 
And, that one, enmeshed us 

in dark, misty air, 
"Was because we forgot— 

in a moment of care — 
That time is a fiction 

and limits not fate"— 
That in love eternal 

there is no "TOO LATE*" 



123 




O amount of reflection 
lessens the annoyance 
of a contretemps come 
to a cause that is of no 
interest to any but one's 
self; on the contrary, increases 
it, since in reflection the mind 
runs a wild gamut over the pos- 
sibilities and the impossibilities 
until it falls back desoie,—desole J 



124 




WALKED along a pathway that 
overlooked the highway of a life, 
—no dusty thoroughfare, but one 
with wealth of flora planted, and 
I marveled at the care with which 
all this was nurtured into a per- 
fection of bloom* The many who were 
graciously permitted to walk that way 
found turf with intersect of soft white 
sand, for the f eet's comfort ; and of these 
many who walked, I saw how some were 
on duty, some on pleasure bent, but some 
on wantonness* ♦ ♦ ♦ I walked again along 
the overlooking pathway, and, looking, 
saw all the flowers within a long arm's 
reach broken, and thrown ruthlessly into 
the roadway, while the green and tender 
leaves and frondage were ground as by a 
heel into the soiL Appalled at such wan- 
ton devastation of the beauty that had 
contributed so much to the cheer of Duty's 
wayfarers, so much to the joy of pleasure 
seekers, I questioned what kind of enemy 
could have done this* And then I remem- 
bered the wanton. These were the swine 
before whom pearls had been spread* As I 



125 



pondered, there came from out a pathway, 
descending the mountain's side through 
shelter of trees and interlace of vines, a wo- 
man, tall and slight* She stepped into the 
middle of the roadway and for one short 
hour walked slowly about, contemplating 
the enormity of the devastation* Neither 
wind nor rain wrought this ruin ; no law 
of nature compelling acquiescence, but 
that unnatural thing, ruthless wanton- 
ness* She pondered long how it was, that 
a domain, which by reason of natural 
beauty seemed to have been intended for 
the pleasure of many, and through which, 
to that end, she had opened up the fairest 
of highways,— how it was that any way- 
farer could have been thus lawless* I 
watched her as she stopped to gather up 
the broken bloom, and noted how tenderly 
she lifted the crushed leaves from the mel- 
low earth ; and then I saw her turn and 
look away to where the entrance and the 
egress gates stood open wide : and I knew 
that from henceforth these would be closed. 
"What loss! what loss!" I cried; and 
as though my voice had reached her ear 
she raised her eyes, but they looked far 
away beyond my pathway's height, and 
as the sinking sun turned the clouds that 
threatened to enshroud the evening's sky 
into a glory, she closed the gates* 



126 



u The sky was f air f 
And a fresh breath of spring stirred everywhere* 

white anemones 

Starred the cool turf, and clumps of primroses 
Ran out from the dark underwood behind* 
No fairer resting place man could find 

and only, 

The white sheep are sometimes seen 

Cross and recross the strip of moon-blanched green/ 3 



127 




O the eye the skin's 
smoothness about a 
deep wound may- 
seem as perfect as 
before the wound 
was made, but to the touch, 
—that more sensitive of 
senses,— will be revealed the 
spot where the blade en- 
tered* 



128 



HE tatters of hap- 
piness best go with 
the wind that rent 
it ; kept, they serve 
no better end than 
to remind* No feast is pal- 
atable with a skeleton at 
the board* 




129 



HEN all the fires of 
life get stamped 
low and all the 
hopes of life un- 
winged, then shut 

thou thyself in the workshop 

of thy souL 




130 




ROM the moment 
in which the door 
of birth opens and 
lets a life out upon 
the stage of living, 
until the moment in which 
the door of death closes up- 
on its acting, life is one great 
tragedy:— comedy is only 
its by-play* 



131 



God kept a soul in leash,— 
Most danger-near the portal of this world,— 
Wherein, a body made and fashioned in a mold, 

His own,— 
"Was waiting for the life-throb through its veins. 

God turned his face,— 
And straightway slipped the soul from side of Him : 
And ere he saw 'twas opening up to life 
Each dormant organ of the body there, that else 
Was sodden clay* 

The soul had chosen and its march begun. 
Slow steps at first for one o'er brim with life, — 
But hope gave promise, fast would grow the pace 
When once those untaught feet had learned life's 
stride. 

And then, 
Dear soul, what better couldst thou do ? 
Go back thou couldst not ; the door was closed. 
'Twas forward thou must go t howe'er opposed,— 
Until thy God-taught feet had learned to run,— 

To carry thee from whence thine eyes should see 
The farther portal to God's paradise : to which,— 
When come,— thy body will have done, and thou, 
Enfreed, will leave it and slip back to God. 



132 




HE episodes of ever so 
dear a little animal ex- 
istence are not enga- 
gingly-interesting to the 
readers of biography* 
It is only when the soil of life 
heaves into unevenness, break- 
ing the flat plain of childhood 
into the picturesque by action, 
that biography is engaging* 



133 



F thy life unrolls 
pure cloth of gold, 
see to it that profane 
hands slash not into 
it as into common 
stuff,— and, in the end, use 
the remnant for the soles of 
their feet* 



134 



HEN no harvest is, 
gather together the 
scattered straws from 
the last, and bunch 
them together in the 
sunniest corner of thy dwelling 
place; then will thy flesh— may- 
be thy spirit— have comforts 




44 The nun said her prayer, 
The nun wove her lace : 
Still was the air, 
Lonely the place* 
Only the convent bell, only the wild bird's note 
With the sweet pang of sound the sighing silence 
smote* 

The nun said her prayer, 

The nun worked her lace : 
Her cell was bare, 

None saw her face* 
Who then could ever think, who then could ever 

care? 
Her tears fell on the lace, her smile broke through 
the prayer* 

The nun said her prayer, 

The nun wove her lace : 
Life sad and fair, 
Pity's keen grace, 
Shaped with the broider's thread, shaped with the 

pious plaint, 
One pattern, lilies white : one pattern, lilies quaint* 

The nun ceased to pray, 

The nun dropped her lace : 
Through dusk of day 
Veiled mourners pace* 
What snow-white angels bear, what fevered mortals 

wear, 
The lilies of her lace, the lilies of her prayer I n 



136 




HE force of education not infre- 
quently holds in severest reserve 
natures whose beauty could be 
discovered only by a full, free 
outflow* Such men walk life's 
path like sentinels on their one beat, hav- 
ing enough of the soldier nature to en- 
dure to the end the dead monotony* But 
there are men who could not walk such 
path though from every side gratuities 
and condescensions pressed upon them* 
Freedom they must have; — the days 
must be filled with fresh, cheering glad- 
ness and allow of merrymaking over 
t!ie simplest of their joys* Then is there 
courage for any buffeting and the grace 
to turn storm elements into serenest calm* 



137 



THE WHEEL IS COME FULL 
CIRCLE* 




FELICITOUS line, which in 
simple words gathers into one 
thought an entire drama, and 
sends the truth of it jingling 
along the lines of thought! 
4 4 The<wheel is come full circle* ' ' 
A circle being the emblem of eternity, what 
means it when one, with all its limitless 
boundaries, is drawn around the heart,— a 
dear name for its center ? What but that 
such heart wears from henceforth the sym- 
bols of that happiness and dilates within 
the circle of it through the years of time ; 
and will, with God's grace, through eter- 
nity* In the presence of the beloved, with 
the heart's movement, the circle may ex- 
pand, but no new element of happiness will 
find room within its circumference* Feel- 
ing, too, will expand, and give growth and 
amplitude to every germ of joy planted 
within, and speedily will the hundredfold 
be brought forth* 

In this harvest, words of simple truth 
will show their marvelous power to pro- 
duce a confidence, spontaneous, and re- 
freshing as the dew ! One would think 



138 



such golden grain, like the seeds found 
buried for ages in the dark warmth of 
the pyramids of Egypt, could best con- 
serve its vitality in the deep recesses where, 
excluded from the light of day, it drew its 
life from that other element of growth, 
warmth,— the warmth of the heart in 
which it lay so long ; but, the element of 
growth, light, being missing, the life of 
the grain was dormant,— yes, dormant,— 
in the deep recesses of the heart, until in a 
moment of grace which, in a crisis, comes 
to the aid of nature— in a moment of in- 
spired confidence,— a man reaches down 
into these caverns of silence, and from its 
hiding place draws forth the torpid germ 
into the light I— and then, 

44 There rises an unspeakable desire 

A longing to inquire 

Into the mystery of this heart which beats 

So wild, so deep in us— to know"; 

and, 

44 A man becomes aware of his life's flow 

And hears its winding murmur, and he sees 

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze." 

If, then, greater joy no man hath than 
to open his heart and let the full light of 
a love into its warm recesses, what will be 



139 



the new consecration he will make of him- 
self? and how will he feel under this 
apocalypse of the soul— its wondrous rev- 
elations ? 

If life were religion he would bow down 
and adore forever ! Under the influence 
of this strange apocalypse, what more 
natural than that he should imagine life, 
—like that of a monarch's of Israel,— gone 
back on its dial plate,— imagine the world 
remade in its ordainment,— imagine the 
will untrammeled and that man could 
place his love, without reserve, under the 
rule of that will, no hindrance to its show- 
ing ever new unfoldings of love's wealth 
and affluence ; ready to undergo any test 
of its truth and fidelity ; bent on gather- 
ing all knowledge and in concentrating 
every joy ; excluding forever every image 
but that of the beloved ? What more nat- 
ural than for him to imagine all this in 
his new life, and to feel the air perfumed, 
and redolent of happiness ? 

Natural, and possible,— for though life 
is not gone back on its dial plate, but is 
going forward to its setting, the joy of it 
is, that unlike the days that had marked 
by the sun, and measured, perchance, by 
some rainbow of promise, the new days 
mark by the meridian of a star, whose 
light falls full upon the wheel that is come 
full circle* 



140 



"All that I know 
Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar) 
Now a dart of red. 

Now a dart of blue ; 
Till my friends have said 
They would fain see, too, 
My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs 

furled : 
They must solace themselves with the Saturn 

above it* 
What matter to me if their star is a world ? 
Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I love it*" 



141 



There axe laws which take 
more of courage to obey than 
of foolhardiness to disobey* 



The will that dares to dan- 
ger and allows an appetizer 
without imposing a penalty 
is a rare one* 



142 



If you would have thirst 
obey the law, don't drive de- 
sire danger-close to the spark- 
ling waters of temptation^ 



143 



Watch those stagnate 
who neither make an 
opportunity nor embrace 
a chance* 



144 




EGRET suggests a con- 
fession, — penance,— and 
close in the wake of it 
"stalks Remorse," that 
surly enemy of sleep* 
But there is no sigh for "the 
oblivion of sleep," when wake- 
fulness calls up everything to joy 
over, nothing to regret* 



145 



44 1 count life just a stuff 

To try the souPs strength on, educe the man : 

Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve." 



146 




T was a wild day; the clouds, like 
mountains piled upon each other, 
were adrift in the sky; and all the 
air was filled with certain and un- 
certain sounds* Through this, and 
into an uncertainty in harmony 
with wind and sound, a pilgrim went in 
search of a spot he had once, as by en- 
chantment, come upon in a forest where 
the hand of an Ariadne would alone make 
sure of safe egress* In that forest retreat 
he had seen, as in a mirror, the deep life 
lineaments which, so long held in bonds, 
he believed to have been effaced : but, he 
had there seen them and recognized in 
them his true self, and in going his way 
he had not ceased to wonder nor ceased to 
be moved by the mysterious power of the 
revelation* Never could he be again as 
if he had not looked into that magic 
mirror, for, as a shadow with its substance 
the revelation walked by him* 

The inward struggle it had evoked was 
passed, but he would find the place again 
and carry away from it some such me- 
mento as is tenderly plucked from a dear 
grave, or from any spot endeared by a sur- 
charge of life* His intent was to find the 
enchanted path at the forest's edge and in 
it trace out his first footprints;— so he 



147 



crossed the grassy slope* edged along the 
highway to where a stream skirted past 
the trees of the great forest and knew that 
somewhere, close by, was the entrance to 
the path he sought* He pushed aside the 
thick undergrowth, peered into the wood- 
ed hillside; but no opening revealed itself* 
The tall trees and thick undergrowth gave 
no sign, and a nervous, rapid beating of 
his heart told him that hope and fear were 
in full conflict* Then he plunged into the 
thicket where he ran over mounds and 
into hollows until he believed some pre- 
ternatural power was blinding him,— then 
desperately sought the open again, and 
with that impatience which accompanies 
a baffled search followed a long sweep of 
open hillside, but keeping close to the 
wood in which he had been struggling* 
Now he loitered about, neither sitting nor 
standing long at a time ; and, like Childe 
Roland, he carried a slug-horn at his belt, 
and " dauntless n he raised it to his lips 
and blew* 

Back from the deep heart of the forest 
came a clear echo* and on the right, in the 
thicket's break, he saw the path* Strange, 
rapturous memories put the Ariadne thread 
into his hand, and anon he stood upon the 
hallowed ground he sought, the very spot 
where had been enacted the fateful drama 
of his life* ♦ ♦ ♦ The wind swept the tree- 



148 



tops in one great symphony of sound; and 
the soul of the man was responsive to every 
harmony evoked, for there he held, 

44 Bound up together in one volume, 
What through the universe in leaves is scattered ; 
Substance, and accident, and their operations, 
All interfused together in such wise 
That what I speak of is one great light* 

A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish* 
♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦ The love which moves the sun 

and all the stars*" 



149 




ND thy nightingale, when 
they caught ana caged it, 
refused to sing? Softly didst 
thou unbar the cage,— thou 
heardest the foliage rustle, 
and, looking through the moonlight 
thine eyes saw that it had found its 
mate* And thou didst feel that the 
secret of its music was the presence 
of a thing beloved/' 



150 



Let all else go, I keep — 
As of a ruin a monolith — 
Thus much, one verse of five words, 

each a boon:— 
Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon. 

Robert cBrawning. 



Lake Como, morning, a villa., 
Cupid and Psyche, a grove* 




ET all else go/*— thus much, no 
more, I keep of all the languor- 
ous beauty that hung* above and 
around the shores of Italy's fair- 
est gem— Como— as I drifted into 
its resting places and wandered 
through its groves* Close to the edge of 
one of these, up at a villa, I came upon 
that incomparable history of Love, written 
by the hand of Canova, along the lines of 
finest marble* A creation of surpassing 
loveliness, this history! How came it, 
O ye gods of Olympus, that not one of 
you did create such as this, but left the 
immortal task to mortal hands? And 
how came it, O ye poets of Love, ye who 
have sung of Jupiter, Apollo, and the rest, 
that not one of you has sung of the beauty 
of these, in this perfectest grouping of 
Love's god and goddess ? The language 
of Greece would alone be equal to a har- 
monious rendering of the rich, flexible, 



151 



overflowing imagery here conveyed in 
marble ; and Greek art being a strong ele- 
ment in each, Goethe, Shelley, Browning, 
might have sung fittingly of this master 
work— Cupid and Psyche in the embrace 
of love eternal* For the love here por- 
trayed is not an episode of existence but 
the life actual, full and free* And so per- 
fect is the delineation in this marble— 
warm with life, and a kiss the symbol of it 
—that one is made to feel the beauty of 
the mutual inward inhesion of two souls 
when under the masterful influence of 
love* 

Canova chose that moment in which 
Psyche,— soul-beauty,— makes convert 
of cAmor, long time knight-errant holding 
free range* She shows the god of Love this 
beauty; he recognizes,— claims it for his 
own* There is neither coyness nor con- 
test, not a trace of victor or vanquished, as 
he stoops to gather this love to his soul; 
—nothing but the simple, natural surren- 
der of soul to soul, as instant and unre- 
served as when self recognized self 'in par- 
adise* Thenceforth one life* 

What an atmosphere was this, that 
made of the somber walls of the old villa 
a gray splendor ! Outside all was a green 
splendor* Lif e* green and fragrant : a life 
of which that life, u in a love," is part* 
♦ ♦ ♦ I wandered over the dew-pearled grass 



152 



towards the grove with its embowering 
leaves* Footsteps, light as the air that set 
the leaves in motion, followed* I dare 
not turn* Had nature wooed them into 
their own sweet element ? and were they 
roaming 

Through the grass* —through the grass* 

And the tangled weeds in mass* 

And the wild flowers nodding as they pass I 

Hear them whisper*— morning's bliss! — 

See them seal it with a kiss ! 

"Without which their heaven they'd miss* 

Bending grass and tangled weeds*— 
Laughing flowers that drop your seeds*— 
Hear their vows and whispered needs:— 

Hear their vows:— and interlace 
Leaf-like wings— for one brief space — 
And sponsors be to Love's embrace* 

"Let all else go*"— I keep these !— living 
in that love which dilates and endures :— 
crowned with perfect beauty and perpet- 
ual youth! ♦♦♦♦♦♦ Lake Como,— morning, 
—a villa, — Cupid and Psyche, —a grove I 



153 




HE artistic spirit that moves 
in our century, and that irre- 
sistibly impels every man 
whose calling has within it 
any of the higher possibilities 
to establish between it and his spirit 
a sacred relationship, has brought in- 
to existence a nobler purpose, a pro- 
founder sincerity, a larger vitality, 
and a certain mystic charm in the 
whole business of living/' 



154 



RYSTALLIZED thought 
poetic, because, the 



is 

substance of the thing 
thought of having fallen 
away, the soul of it only 
remains ; and this the poet, when 
his inspiration is the truest, uses* 




155 






HEN we consider what 
life would be without 
separation from that 
we love best in the 
world, then are we 
discontent : but when we remem- 
ber what life was, before we had 
any share in the best lo<ved, then 
are we content indeed* 



156 



Vampires are not respecters of 
time or place, and being good 
sailors, are always "on the 
bridge " keeping an outlook for 
haunts, sacred* 



Note* —Be quick to recognize these and 
deny them the place of f amiliars, if you 
would maintain the haunt's sacr edness* 



157 



LE JUSTE MILIEU. 



Let not the sun rise on thy confidence 
nor go down upon thine anger : forgive- 
ness thou owest to thine enemy, remem- 
brance to thyself*— Colton. 



158 




[ OD invests every soul with certain 
rights its own,— nobody else's,— 
5j) and that amiability which al- 
lows these to be appropriated by 
another is as reprehensible as is 
the vandalism of the appropriated A 
higher law is obeyed in guarding these 
rights than in indulging the demands of 
the selfish in such vandalism* Some one 
has put the matter in this delightful epi- 
gram : * Yes, be kind, be generous, but do 
not allow yourself to be melted down for 
the benefit of the tallow trade/' 



159 




HE world goes astray on the sub- 
ject of rights and duties, giving, 
in its autocratic way, precedence 
to right, whereas sound philoso- 
phy reverses the order, gives duty 
the first place; because, duty is 
prior to right in that it exists independent 
of right and limits right* Madam Guizot 
writes in one of her interesting letters, 
44 The idea, of duty must precede that of 
right as cause must precede ei feet* There 
are rights because there are duties, not 
duties because there are rights: just as 
there is society because there are men, not 
men because there is society* All social 
rights that derive from our nature, as man, 
are possessed by us in virtue of duties im- 
posed upon us and upon other men, our 
equals/' And then she proceeds to illus- 
trate the truth of this philosophy in that 
simple way that "he who runs may read/' 
"A father has the right of obedience from 
his son as long as obedience is a duty for 
the son : when that duty ceases the right 
no longer exists: yet the nature of the 
father remains unchanged; the change is 
in the son, there being no longer in him 
that which created in the father a right 
over him— that is, no longer the duty of 
obedience* And so, in society of every 
sort, right supposes duty; and the author- 
ity of all law is founded on the duty to 



160 



obey/' Despite the harsh features and 
exacting ways of duty, as it appears at 
an age when inexperience and willfulness 
are at war with the powers that be, seek- 
ing to reverse the order of their ruling ; 
these laws, in the long run, never fail to 
impress the inexperienced or lawless with 
the gentleness as well as the forcefulness 
of their features* The wheel turns untir- 
ingly on, the inexperienced of yesterday 
are the experienced of today; duty is 
supreme, and justice tempered with love is 
meted out to right* 



161 




HE nobler faculties are not 
much employed in the so- 
called everyday aff airs, and 
not because we find them too 
good* Why then ? Possibly 
because we believe there to be a fit- 
ness in the employment of something 
less than the noblest in affairs of a 
common sort; possibly because we 
never outgrow that kind of childish- 
ness which demands compliment for 
doing well and feels pique at the ab- 
sence of it:— possibly ♦ 



162 




IVE that better charity 
than your purse,— your 
hand,— and lift some 
wayfarer to where he 
may see, however far 
they be, the mountains of prom- 
ise, that in good time he may 
walk thitherward by way of the 
sweet valleys of realization* 



163 




LANT each cross and 
leave it at the mile's end 
for which it was intend- 
ed; the waiting ones 
need in turn thy shoul- 
ders* Brace thy shoulders, bear 
each cross with like readiness to 
its destined place, and life will be 
cheated of thee among its sacri- 
ficed* 



164 




HE heart feels an undefined 
satisfaction, a certain sub- 
liming of its nature, in hear- 
ing a good and well-deserved 
compliment spoken in its ear* 
And when this satisfaction ties to- 
gether the ends of that fine cord on 
which we have strung the iridescent 
pearls of feeling, well may we ex- 
claim, "Is this necklace indeed ours!" 



165 



HE char mof a corre- 
spondence consists 
in its being of a 
character interest- 
ing in itself; no 
need of introducing third 
persons or the gossip of them* 




166 




HERE is a time-established 
belief that whatever the sub- 
ject of a woman's letter, the 
gist of it is to be found at 
the end, done up in a post- 
script or sent trailing* along the page's 
margin* Which method— one half 
the world being partial to postscripts 
about the other half— ought to be 
most popular, and is ; since with the 
letter finished, it is with a delicious 
alertness that the marginal pursuit 
begins, up and down, in and out, 
around corners, until in "full cry" the 
scent of the racy thought, or news ex- 
traordinaire, is come upon* Delight- 
ful ! Long life and health to sports- 
men of every genre. 



167 



Dear S— — h* 

Since that day on which old Master 
Maitland pitted us against each other for 
the best essay to be written on the proverb 
—and very apparent truth— "God made the 
country; man made the town/' and we 
agreed to return him blank papers, I have 
always been proud of the courage we evi- 
denced in declining to attempt an essay 
on a. fad that is done and finished all in 
one line, — no argument about it* But now 
that I am come down from our hill coun- 
try, from the God-made of our boyhood, 
into the man-made of our dreams and de- 
sires, I have not the courage to send you 
blank paper, which will go to prove an- 
other fact— that "We change our skies, 
but not our minds/' The sweet truth of 
that will be accepted unchallenged by you, 
dear S— — , which would not be its happy 
luck had I proclaimed it to my neighbor 
here* I am in the man-made now, where 
my neighbor delights in raising the most 
complex questions from very simplest 
truths; and when he has evolved there- 
from a ten-storied argument and con- 
vinced himself (because of my silent at- 
tention) that I would make the best of 
tenants for the tenth floor of his great 
brick apartment house ("so apprecia- 
tive"— of his ten-storied theories), I bow 
me out through his big doorways, or slip 



168 



me down his fire escapes, anyway, any- 
how, so that I get away to the God-made, 
—out into the "fields all tied up nosegay- 
like with hedges/* And if it be May in 
England, these hedges will be rollicking 
with bloom and the fields laughing with 
flowers, and all together they will be as 
fresh and as full of sweet sounds as was 
the old cathedral, in the close near by, ten 
centuries ago* 

Or, if these fields be in France, in Ger- 
many, in Italy, they will be ramparted 
with tall poplars, silken-leaved lindens, 
soft gray olives; and under cover of kneel- 
ing willows, streams will be whispering 
sylvan secrets to the listening banks, and 
all will be as fresh and joyous as young life 
in the new-made town,— new-made, ten 
centuries ago* Or, if these fields be the 
inheritance of the Arab, the Nile will 
come pulsing through their sphinx-like 
silence ; keeping the life-throb in the old 
Land's breast, and the shimmering radi- 
ance of the sun in its afterglow will vivify 
the yellow waste of shifting sand and over- 
lay with gold the temples,— the temples 
of forty centuries ago* 

And then beyond these fields and be- 
yond all centuries are the hilts,— "the evet- 
lasting hills"— that come down in all the 
witchery of fern and vine and glinting 
leaves into the very lap of the time-scarred 



169 



towns, while the greater mountains, like 
to a stampede of wild horses, break away, 
crowding upon each other, climbing, 
climbing,— until in the upper air they toss 
foam-white clouds from side and flank 
of them and shake out manes of eternal 
beauty against the blue of heaven* 

And so, dear S— — ,in every land, under 
cross or crescent, Nature bids her wor- 
shipers to her fresh, new-made Meccas 
and sends them on their way again wear- 
ing, like a crown* the green turban of the 
devout, by which, when I am come back 
to the hill country, you will know me for 
a true Moslem of the God-made, for 

High on the mountain's steepest rock* 
Or low by a shrine at the base* 
I see as I look to the shrine* or the top*— 
Forever, and always God's face ! 



170 



ACH day's attainment 
finds the earnest climber 
as grateful for the cool- 
ing moss into which he 
presses his tired feet as 
will the last attainment of all, 
since each in turn is u dared and 
done*" 




171 



"AS BY FIRE/' 




O arrive at the determination to 
do is said to be half the battle 
—the lesser half, if the thing to 
be done is the crucial one of de- 
stroying loved and valued letters 
—and it is only in obedience to 
the law of expediency that such determi- 
nation is arrived at* For, what says the la c iv 
on this most interesting subject } " Manu- 
script, to which belong letters personal 
that are worth valuing, is heritable prop- 
erty and can be given a commercial val- 
ue/' A commercial value ! 

Such the law, and such the penalty* 
The alternative, the crucial one of saving, 
"as by fire," the beloved children of a dear 
pen* Beloved children I Niobe plead with 
Apollo to spare one at least of her dear 
children— "Leave me but the least of 
them ":— but the god was inexorable ; all 
the fair forms that had from their birth 
grown nearer and dearer to Niobe's 
heart were doomed to perish* 

A relentless law, whether it be of hate 
or expediency, is resultant in loss to every 
Niobean heart ; as, witness letters,— dear 
in their personality and valued because 
they are the fairest children of a heart 
and brain beloved* In the name of the 



172 



love that bore them and of the love they 
inspire, we plead for one— "unam"— one 
only!— but the goddess, that untiring 
huntress Expediency, has decreed, and 
the sacrifice begins* 

Like Niobe, we cling in turn to each, 
repossess ourselves of each beautiful fea- 
ture, and, despite the heart's pleadings for 
one, "only one/' sec them perish* 

Others may be born in their stead, but 
the loss of the "firstborn" has passed 
into the sacred page as among the most 
poignant of griefs* 



173 




can 



XPEDIENCY has a graver sound, 
and therefore is, possibly, a more 
dignified title to give to the serv- 
ice rendered by that comely little 
handmaid Tact* That Principle 
without the services of either is 
true, for she does not take them into her 
service for the purpose of avoiding issues 
or compromising with the unprincipled ; 
but Principle "is wise unto salvation," 
and to that end recognizes the wisdom of 
Expediency's methods and employs them 
in the adjustment of claims that conflict— 
an adjustment that concedes nothing of 
principle* 



174 




HE truth in its true form 
is the mightiest thing on 
earth: it does not need 
eloquence or skill or pas- 
sion to plead its claims; 
it makes way for itself , rises up- 
on mankind as the unclouded 
sun does upon the earth, and 
puts the world under the sense of 
its glory and beneficent power/' 



175 



MY LADY. 




AM not pleased when, in a crowd, 
I have my attention arrested by a 
face wherein I see a likeness ; the 
feeling comes that some stranger 
is travesting my friend* But when 
I find the likeness in the lines of 
a fine portraiture* on the pages of a book* 
I delight me with a recognition* and eager- 
ly run my finger along the lines to make 
sure that this* his lady of yesterday* is 
worthy to be ancestress of my lady of to- 
day* Along these lines I read :— that his 
had "a gracefulness overtopping the hu- 
man in motion and in word*" And mine* 
That his had "the softness of temper 
becoming a lady* with the personal cour- 
age of a hero*" And mine* 

That his "spoke with a voice most 
agreeable; plain* simple words* never hesi- 
tating*" And mine* 

That his was "little versed in the com- 
mon topics— scandal* censure* and detrac- 
tion; that these formed no part of her 
conversation* She chose men rather than 
women for companionship; and yet she 
held the esteem and friendship of all— a 
thing extraordinary, since so much knowl- 
edge, wit, and vivacity in a woman are 



176 



qualities which usually create envy and 
its ills/' And mine* 

That his had u honor, truth, liberality, 
modesty —adorning virtues— and such her 
grace of manner that all sorts of people 
were at their best in her presence* To 
listen without distraction or indifference 
was the compliment she paid to the .speak- 
er/' And mine* 

That his "in friendship steadfast and 
loyal was." 

And mine* 



177 



T is as serious an indiscre- 
tion on the part of the 
woman of the Occident 
to drop the yasmack of 
conventionality as for her 
sister of the Orient to let fall her 
beauty-enhancingf veil* Nohasty 
readjustment makes the indiscre- 
tion less or reestablishes, in the 
eyes of the onlooker, the happy 
illusions* Lovely yasmack ! 



178 




g-«j ICTURES there are which so hold 
l| J| the light within them that nei- 
ther ray of sun nor that of fullest 
moon is needed to bring out the 
palest tint* These pictures hang 
within the chancel rails of lif e, aglow with 
richest color, yet soft and dim as any Ra- 
phaelite ; and, in this soft, rich glow of 
cloistered light, draw near or half recede, 
just as memory wakes or sleeps* Or, 
mayhap, these pictures start into very life 
when some hope, newborn, fans with joy- 
ous wing the smoldering fire on the altar, 
close* 

Glowing or dim, these are the chancel 
pictures! and, if one is more beauteous 
than another, it is that one before which 
we sit and call back some one day from 
out the days, some one year from out the 
years,— call these together, a fair sister- 
hood, and look with tenderness and pride 
upon the beauty that is theirs! Such 
beauteous ones hang high, high within 

the holy place, enshrined indeed ! ♦ 

Pilgrims fetch offerings to the shrines 
of loved and worshiped saints, and leave 
them there with prayers,— sometimes with 
tears* 



179 



ETAPHYSICS might 
be reckoned a species 
of poetry, dealing as 
it does with the ideal 
not as a fiction but as 
a real,— such, in fact, as the sub- 
lime poets make it* 




180 



A mind filled with bright fancies 
and quick imaginings easily estab- 
lishes a bon camaraderie between the 
ideal and the real* 



181 




HE warm heart and clear brain 
of Boyesen, united gave the 
scarcely to be gainsaid testimony 
that "The most exquisite happi- 
ness of love does not consist in 
possession, but in rapturous an- 
ticipation and aspiration* The winged 
pulse, the deep stirrings of unutterable 
things, the ecstatic flashes of sublime in- 
sight, all that glorious tumult of soul 
that tunes us up and makes us live and 
thrill in every fiber— that is the sum of 
human felicity, the heavenly fullness 
foreshadowed, a faint recollection and an 
unmistakable prophecy of the immortality 
that awaits us/* 

The marvel is not that such joy as this, 
this fullness of joy, this perf ectest sense of 
feeling, should sublime a life, but that a 
heart unused to profuse joy could contain 
such ; nor could it, were this joy less ethe- 
real than the spirit which it pervades* A 
life thus sublimed may wear the harness 
of living ; the soul, too, may be strapped 
and buckled to the load : but this thing 
which the eye of man hath not seen, 
neither hath it entered into the under- 
standing of man,— this precious thing,— 
creates for him the new heaven and the new 
earth* 

The old earth, to which the parable of 
the wine that must be put into new bottles, 



182 



applied, is done away ; and in its place 
that other world is created in which the 
soul may expand in endless delight, and 
through which, 

" With the richest overflow 
Of joy that ever poured from heaven, we go our 
way" 

among the days that differ one from the 
other only in the rich variety of their 
joys, and all of them coming and going 
as did those fabled beings who came to 
earth in ethereal light and movement— 
one moment naught to be seen; the next, 
an apparition refulgent with light divine! 



183 



BETROTHED. 



Breath of the Rose 
And Violet blue 
Unto each other pledged 

Love, sweet and true,— 
Ranged the fields 

In rapturous bliss 
Lisping vows akin to this: 
44 In dreams of night and thoughts by day, 
Nearer, still nearer, 'till, in heart of May, 
Grown to love's stature, we'll love's law obey. 



184 




"Dans le marriage it y a tou jours un qui 
aime, et V autre qui se laisse aimer/' 



FRENCH proverb this, the law 
of which Amiel disclaims thus: 
"To surrender what is most 
profound and mysterious in 
one's being; and personality at 
any price less than that of 
absolute reciprocity is profanation*" 
Clearly, Amiel is the lawgiver, the prov- 
erb the embodiment of— shall I say, a 
rule? 

Having discovered the law and the 
rule of the mysteriously intricate question, 
I went in search of any compliment there 
might be attached to a contract,— interest- 
ing in itself, independent of law or rule, 
and my first authority declared that there 
is a compliment in the question, u the 
greatest compliment a woman can pay a 
man, the compliment of marrying him/' 
My second authority declared this to be 
the proverb— the rule* per ad venture, the 
law having been given, "in Paradise, 
before the fall, where Eve was offered to 
Adam for his acceptance*" So, it may 
be, that among the momentous results of 
that catastrophe, there was a reversal of 
the paradisiac precedent, and thus mat- 
rimonial compliments are now the pre- 



185 



rogative of woman to bestow* At all 
events man must now pay court to her* 
and only under her scrutiny and approval 
does he pass the flaming portal of her 
paradise : and it is she that now u raises 
a mortal to the skies/' making him ruler 
over a choice part of creation* rejoicing 
herself in being the first of his subjects I 

Next* I looked up some philosophy on 
the subject* which reads* u Since matri- 
mony supposes* and goes so far as to re- 
quire* every other possible union to exist 
antecedently to the matrimonial union* 
it would assuredly be a great compliment 
to a suitor to be informed that he pos- 
sesses qualities in full accord with the 
living pattern of his aspirations! Nothing 
now is needed but a ceremony* and her 
compliment is advanced to a complement 
—perfect union J" 

The law:— the rule:— the compliment: 
—the philosophy:— and Love dares to 
break or thwart any or all these ! 

Wisdom should have been born twin 
to Love*— and the first born of the two* 



186 




IVILIZATION of tenet 
refines the tortures of 
the soul than contrib- 
utes to its pleasures; 
and yet the whole world 
gives its best soul-effort to the 
project of universal civilization* 
That bondmen may be freed, 
freemen must be bond* Such the 
law :— and who gainsays the law ? 



187 




ILENCE means so much more 
than noise : it means an apprecia- 
tion too fine to be expressed, a feel- 
ing too fine to be demonstrated* 
Or, when a serious dissatisfaction 
or a cold indifference is not to be made 
apparent, it means a delicate etiquette* 
Intuition is the one good interpreter, and 
the pity is so few keep her in employ* 
Her services count for little if called on 
only in emergencies* 




OLITUDE and Solitude! 
See her in the great Sa- 
hara enthroned, empress 
supreme, a forceful 
charmer, to whom we 
make obeisance with a love pro- 
found and joyous* See her in 
the great world, tyrant absolute, 
a forceful ruler to whom we 
make obeisance with a love pro- 
found in its pathos* 



189 



OMAN'S solitude is 
in habitations, in the 
glare and flare of 
everyday life, and 
her contentment is in 
proportion to the cheerfulness 
with which she accepts the con- 
ditions* 




190 




COTERIE of little fairies built 
for their queen a palace ; and, 
it being a fairy palace, there 
was no fancy too illusive, and 
none that escaped embodiment 
in this marvelous creation* 
Albeit fairies are in no need of a high- 
way over which to convey material, these 
chose to select their building site no long 
way removed from a good highway, and, 
while not ignoring the convenience it af- 
forded in the transportation of heavy 
materials, considered more the expediency 
of having their queen within reach of 
such of the halt and blind as should need 
to seek her good offices* And so, not in 
their forest demesne but on the edge of it, 
near to the deep waterways and the gently 
flowing streams that made through the 
forest avenues of sparkling brightness and 
pretty ways of bubbling sweetness, they 
built the palace for their queen* And every 
fairy of them being an architect, the pile 
when finished was like to the thing mor- 
tals fashion in dreams* 

Within,— anterooms, reception rooms, 
audience halls, banquet halls, throne room, 
grand stairways, all tricked out with fairy 
pomp and splendor ; and then an endless 
variety of quiet corridors and tiny stair- 
ways leading to broad balconies and breezy 
belvederes; and above all these floated, 



191 



from innumerable turrets, the royal en- 
sign* 

When the band of architects declared 
the palace finished, their queen gave com- 
mand that every ensign be set afloat and 
every fairy subject in the kingdom bidden 
to a seven days' merrymaking, the which 
to close with a fete champetre, and that at 
this festival she would confer the honor of 
knighthood on the several architects* 

The seven days of merrymaking end- 
ed, her majesty called these, her now 
knighted architects, together in special 
audience, and submitted to them a plan 
for the building of yet another turret* 
The architects listened ; but so far tran- 
scending the others was this one, in beauty 
of conception, that each architect in turn 
declared it to be a fairy's dream, not pos- 
sible to construct* 

Enough* Her majesty was pleased in- 
deed* and gave them gracious dismissal* 
Then, as 

44 A last remains of sunset dimly burned 
O'er the fair forests* like a torch flame turned 
By the wind back upon its bearer's hand, 
In one long flare of crimson : as a brand, 
The woods beneath lay black," 

she went out upon a balcony that over- 
hung the crimson-tinted forest* From 
thence it was an easy flight to the far 



192 



eastern angle of the highest of the bel- 
vederes* Standing there she moved her 
tiny scepter through the gathering mists* 
Obedient* other mists* soft and fine* came 
up from the far valleys* and down from 
the upper air fell the blue of the sky ; and 
together these* in a mingling ecstatic* un- 
til* in no long time* a shape* a vision, 
moved along the lines of the "fairy's 
dream*"— moved* until it was revealed in 
all fullness: and the little queen saw, 
stepped mto, and walked through her o c wn 
created mystery* Mystery ! 

Now* not a fairy of them* her majesty 
included* knew any religion but that of 
Love* so it was no heresy on her maj- 
esty's part to create a mysterious temple 
in mid-air and install herself priestess at 
its shrine* At Us shrine ! 

Sovereign and priestess now* she saw 
how the noonday sun filtered through 
the golden bloom of yellow roses, and the 
summer breezes turned the leaves of curi- 
ous leaf-missals that lay scattered about 
on cushions of moss ; saw how the morn- 
ing's sun kissed the white heather until a 
soft blush mantled its waxlike cheeks* how 
the glow of the evening's sun sent the 
color coursing* like lifeblood* through the 
spice-scented carnations* 

But listen*sovereign Priestess* the vesper 
bell rings I and the fairy angels are sing- 
ing: 



193 



Lo ! these are his altars,— great god of Love true,— 
And here, at his coming, he'll love's vow renew : 
For when he is come from the wild war's fray, 
Come with his trophies to lay here, and stay, 
He'll sing to thee, Priestess, through night and 
through day* 

Then, hell kiss the sweet heather, come down from 

the hills 
With odor of forest, and bracken and rills,— 
And list to its story of upland and glade,— 
Of fairies that played hide and seek, in its shade, 
Or in heart of its blossoms their gentle vows made. 

And* he'll kneel to the golden rose, — down from the 

skies,— 
And hear a sweet story, that with his own vies,— 
Hear e'en how a mortal, with love near divine, 
Killed once a fierce dragon and saved lady fine ; 
Then did her whole palace with roses entwine* 

Then, last, he will sing of the glory of red!— 

With perfume of spices from Araby's bed, 

And incense uprising through evening's rich glow 

Or falling in rhythm to whisperings low,— 

And then on thee, Priestess, god-love he'll bestow I 

Listen, listen on, thou sovereign Priest- 
ess! The vesper bell rings on ; the angels 
sing on ; and thou hast heard the True and 
the Beautiful— these that have their throne 
above the senses and that are not appre- 
hended by the eye;— and these are thine, 
for thou hast here enthroned them— built 
to them these altars before which the 
angels do always sing* Listen! 



194 




HE forces and the melodies of 
nature do their best work 
while the young soul is alive 
with receptivity and the ear 
is in devout self-surrender* 
The music of the running brook, the 
freshness of the meadow, the solemn 
expanse of lake and sea, the gloom 
and grandeur of valley and moun- 
tain, the ineffable outgoings of morn- 
ing and evening, the sublime pro- 
cession of the stars, reach the heart 
from the first, from the intellect from 
its earliest awakening, carry into the 
mental life from its birth an atmos- 
phere, a color, and tone and power* 
The fibers of man's being grow finer 
and less perceptible as they leave the 
centers behind; and they reach out 
to infinity, ramify among the deepest 
mysteries of the universe, and entwine 
themselves with the God who speaks 
to him both from without and from 
within/' 



195 




HAT the comeliness of 
proportion be preserved, 
Philosophy ought to be 
in constant employ as 
architect to the Virtues; 
since it does happen when one 
among them gets the skyward 
tendency the others are left to 
roof themselves in as best they 
may* Proportion is lost* A Sicil- 
ian proverb puts it, u To pull a 
good oar, the five fingers must 
help one another," or, "To be 
pope one must have been a good 
sacristan*" 



196 




O be the possessor of a 
dominating will is, in 
the formative stages of 
character, dangerous to 
its possessor* Its achieve- 
ments flatter self-esteem until the 
idea obtains that the mind is of 
an all-around superior quality, 
which so tickles vanity that it 
grasps the helm, and so weak- 
ness sits in the place of strength* 



197 




EAKNESS takes no 
hand in bringing the 
out-of-balance into 
poise — a beautiful 
achievement; and 
the strength required to bring 
contending forces into harmony- 
being a masculine quality, the 
possessor of it has good reason 
to rejoice* 



198 




HE best quality of love 
is autocratic in feeling, 
democratic in action,— 
giving royally and in 
simplest fashion* Then, 
any proof of love should be 
enough,— and would be if we 
did but abide by it ; it is the de- 
mand for more, more proof that 
ends, in no long time, in exac- 
tion* Love loves not a task- 
master* 



199 




EGULARITY is a good 
disciplinarian, holding 
well in hand that work 
which can only be car- 
ried by regular siege; 
but it is too often at the cost of 
spontaneity,— mocks sunshine 
and laughter,— each day's ac- 
complishment ending at a dead, 
monotonous level* 



200 



F the trembling: sound in my 
ears was once of the marriage 
bell which began my happi- 
ness, and is now of the passing 
bell which ends it, the differ- 
ence between those two sounds to me 
cannot be counted by the number of 
concussions* There have been some 
curious speculations lately as to the 
conveyance of mental consciousness 
by 4 brain-waves/ What does it mat- 
ter how it is conveyed? The con- 
sciousness itself is not a wave* It may 
be accompanied here or there by any 
quantity of quivers and shakes, up 
or down, of anything you can find 
in the universe that is shakable— 
what is that to me? My friend is 
dead, and my— according to modern 
views— vibratory sorrow is not one 
whit less, or less mysterious, to me, 
than my old quiet one/* 



201 



HEN the time comes to 
train the ivy and the vine 
along the wall where roses 
were wont to bloom, have 
a care for all the little ten- 
drils ; they do so fill with green the 
crumbling mortar's place* 




202 



N Greek and in English and 
in Saxon and in Hebrew and 
in every articulate tongue of 
humanity , the 'spirit of man' 
truly means his passion and 
virtue, and is stately according to 
the height of his conception, and 
stable according to the measure of 
his endurance/' 



203 




IVE out truly, nobly, bravely, 
wisely, happily your human life 
as a human life : not as a super- 
natural life, for you are a man, 
and not an angel ; not as a sen- 
sual life, for you are a man, and not a 
brute ; not as a wicked life, for you are a 
man, and not a demon ; not as a frivolous 
life, for you are a man, and not an in- 
sect* Live, each day, the true life of a man 
today : not yesterday's life only, lest you 
should become a murmurer ; not tomor- 
row's life only, lest you become a vision- 
ary : but the life of happy yesterdays and 
confident tomorrows— the life of today 
unwounded by the Parthian arrows of 
yesterday and undarfcened by the possible 
cloudland of tomorrow* Life is indeed a 
mystery ; but it was God Who gave it, in 
a world "wrapped round with sweet air, 
and bathed in sunshine and abounding 
with knowledge n x and a ray of eternal 
light falls upon it even here, and that light 
shall wholly transfigure it beyond the 
grave/* 



204 



I 




HAGRIN forces itself 
with special pain when 
it becomes apparent 
that there is so much 
as a shade of reluctance 
in acquiescence* Spontaneity is 
the symbol of nearness that the 
heart asks, and is the only proof 
that satisfies it* 



205 



AN IDYL OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 




OME one has said a very pretty- 
thing apropos of seeing* a fine 
lady all alone in a forest: but 
who, and what the words? 
These remain a crystallized 
thought only* Milton consid- 
ered a like scene not unworthy his lordly 
verse ; but Comus is undoubtedly the one 
to see and tell of the " foreign wonder/' 
It was amid woods and sylvan scenes I 
came upon such a picture— a Comus pic- 
ture—and such an one as pastoral poets 
have thought fit to fix in undying verse 
and send— rare specimens that they are— 
down the stream of time* 

Nature was in her brilliant autumn 
mood* and day by day was rendering 
some new part of her symphony of color 
and of sound* The white light of the 
summer had melted into a yellow soft- 
ness like to liquid amber* and the whir of 
summer sound was 

44 Sliding by semitones* ♦ ♦ ♦ to the minor/' 

It was in the very midst of this scene of 
surpassing beauty that I came upon my 
tableau vvvani, the central figure u blithe 
and itee"—una donna perfettissima,—a,tid 
by the unobtrusiveness of my intrusion 7 



206 



was permitted to watch the process of 
imprisoning the sun's rays until they left 
behind, in guerdon of their release, a pic- 
ture:— a sort of forfeit-playing this with 
Apollo, and quite in keeping with the 
pastimes of a shepherdess* If the wind blew 
ever so softly there was alarm lest Zephyr, 
that wayward, mischievous intruder, 
would mar the handiwork, and a very 
serious mischance indeed this to a fair ex- 
pectant of Apollo's condescension* But 
out of these fears I took joy, since every 
new incident made for me a picture,— not 
to be imprisoned,— the one, poetic in its 
singleness,— the one fit for a pastoral poet 
to fix in his undying verse* 

The atmosphere was suffused through 
and through with the yellow softness; 
the semitones of sound slipped away into 
the silences; and all the while pictures 
trooped in and out through the little doors 
of the camera,— 

"Her fingers let them softly through,— " 

her fingers opened and shut the little 
doors, imprisoned and set free the yellow 
light of that October afternoon until the 
last of it had waned and the evening star 
shone tremblingly between the drifting 
clouds to say, "The day is done/' 



207 



"Is the night cold? 
Blows the northeast across the naked moor? 
I have a warm, warm room : come in— 
Come in ! and Love shall lock the door* 

Is the night dark ? 
Drift the dull clouds down-dropping winter damp ? 
I have a secret room : come in — 
Come in ! and Love shall light the lamp. 

Is the night dumb 
Save for the hoarse wind's cry of death and wrong ? 
I have a music room: come in — 
Come in ! and Love shall make a song/' 



208 



SIMPLE gift may suffice to 
fill great gaps, and do away 
with emptiness* Love fixes 
the gift's value, and the 
heart enshrines it where to 

do it homage* Last in gold-value, 

first in love* 




209 



SWEETHEART. 



44 There is a little bird that sings— 

4 Sweetheart I f 
I know not what his name may be I 
I only know his notes please me, 
As loud he sings, and thus sings he — 

4 Sweetheart ! f 

Pve heard him sing on soft spring days — 

4 Sweetheart ! * 
And when the sky was dark above, 
And wintry winds had stripped the grove, 
He still poured forth those words of love— 

4 Sweetheart I ' 

And like that bird, my heart, too, sings — 

4 Sweetheart ! * 
"When heaven is dark, or bright, or blue, 
When trees are bare, or leaves are new, 
It thus sings on— and sings of you— 

4 Sweetheart P 

"What need of other words than these— 

4 Sweetheart?" 
If I should sing a whole year long, 
My love would not be shown more strong 
Than by this short and simple song— 

' Sweetheart !' 



And, Sweetheart, while the little bird has 
been singing, thy feet have been climb- 
ing the mountains and fording the rivers 
of life! 



210 



To these mountains' heights and to 
these rivers' banks I have called, and thy 
voice has answered in tones resonant as 
the trumpet's, aeolian as the harp's* I 
have heard it in the night wind and in 
the noonday breeze, felt it like a breath 
among the odors of the salt sea and among 
the perfume of the flowers* No sound so 
harsh but that thou hast softened it be- 
fore it reached my ear, no air so overladen 
that thou hast not unburdened it* And 
now, in answer to thy call, I come to 
thee with these gatherings of my hands, 
and put them into thine ; these visions of 
my eyes, and hold them close to thine ; 
these voices in my ears, and breathe them 
into thine ; these comrades of my heart, 
and proffer them to thine ; and together 
make them over to thee,— a gift I yet not 
a gift, since from the first they were 
thine I 

44 An exquisite touch 
Bides in the birth of things : no after time can much 
Enhance that fine, that faint, fugitive first of all*" 

So, 

"Come back with me to the first of all, 
Let us learn and love it over again, 
Let us now forget and now recall, 

Break the rosary in a pearly rain, 
And gather what we let fall ! n 

G*E*X* 



211 



